It's cold
Sitting at my computer, window still open, but fan turned off for the first time since May, I'm a little chilly. It's a good thing I never put away my Irish sweater -- it's been laying on the back of the sofa since Spring -- because it is the perfect garment to wrap myself in.
I've had this sweater since I was 18, nearly twenty years. It was a high school graduation gift from my grandparents. Stunt Mother had the same grandparents (unsurprising, since we are cousins), and was given the same sweater. My grandparents must have been nearly 80 when we graduated from college, and by that time many of their day-to-day errands had been taken over by their daughter, my Aunt Maureen. It is very likely that she suggested and ordered the sweaters. It's even possible that she purchased them on one of her frequent, in those days, trips to the Old Sod.
She's there right now, in fact, with Stunt Mother's mother, my Aunt Kathleen, for the first time in years. I kind of wish I'd thought to ask her to buy me a new sweater. This one's elbows and sleeves are unravelled to such a degree that it would embarrass even me to go outside in it. Fortunately, my own mother has the ability to darn it back up again, as she has countless times before. I love that I've owned this sweater for this long, and that it's been in continuous use all this time, that it's the first thing I reach for when there's a nip in the air; that it's been touched by so many of my family's hands. I wonder whether Stunt Mother still has hers.
I've had this sweater since I was 18, nearly twenty years. It was a high school graduation gift from my grandparents. Stunt Mother had the same grandparents (unsurprising, since we are cousins), and was given the same sweater. My grandparents must have been nearly 80 when we graduated from college, and by that time many of their day-to-day errands had been taken over by their daughter, my Aunt Maureen. It is very likely that she suggested and ordered the sweaters. It's even possible that she purchased them on one of her frequent, in those days, trips to the Old Sod.
She's there right now, in fact, with Stunt Mother's mother, my Aunt Kathleen, for the first time in years. I kind of wish I'd thought to ask her to buy me a new sweater. This one's elbows and sleeves are unravelled to such a degree that it would embarrass even me to go outside in it. Fortunately, my own mother has the ability to darn it back up again, as she has countless times before. I love that I've owned this sweater for this long, and that it's been in continuous use all this time, that it's the first thing I reach for when there's a nip in the air; that it's been touched by so many of my family's hands. I wonder whether Stunt Mother still has hers.
posted by Excellent Walker at 10:19 AM
1 Comments:
After fishing it out of my mother's trash not once but TWICE, the cardigan has entirely disintergrated and will reappear this winter as part of an old sweater quilt/blanket thing I'm making. Sniff. At least I didn't actually have to toss it out altogether. I've also worn through another old aran of my mothers.
On the other hand, I have enough proper aran wool to knit a whole sweater in... so perhaps the cardigan will be reborn!
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