Handknit Fisherman Sweater

A fisherman sweater hanging in my closet is an unbleached cream wool with cable-knit panels down the front and a ribbed collar that sits high against the neck. I want to wear it every day from October to April because the weight of the wool on my shoulders feels like a gentle pressure that is calming in the same way a heavy blanket is calming. Cables are not decorative repetitions, they are distinct patterns that traditional Aran knitters assigned to different families and different meanings, with the diamond representing wealth, the cable representing the fisherman's rope. Honeycomb representing the bees that sustained the island community. I do not know who knit mine or where it came from because I found it at an estate sale for $30. Quality of the stitching tells me it was made by someone with skill, because the tension is even across every row and the seams are joined with a mattress stitch that is nearly invisible. Wool is lanolin-rich, which makes it naturally water-resistant. Walking through a light rain in it last week, the water beaded on the surface rather than soaking in. By the time I reached my building the droplets had evaporated and the sweater was dry. People looking at it when I wear it to lectures. Those who comment usually know what they are looking at, asking about the weight of the yarn or whether the pattern is traditional or modified. Those conversations are a kind of recognition that connects the people who pay attention to craft. Color has not yellowed the way cheap wool does because the undyed fleece starts cream and stays cream. Slight variation in shade from strand to strand gives the surface a depth that dyed wool, which is uniform by necessity, can't achieve. I plan to have this sweater for decades. Wool will pill and the elbows will thin, and those changes will be evidence that I wore it rather than stored it. Lanolin smell is faint, a waxy animal smell that Turns out when the sweater gets warm. It is comforting in a way that synthetic fibers, which smell like nothing or like chemicals, are not. At an estate sale price of $30 I got 40 or 50 hours of someone's labor for the cost of a pizza. I think about that inequity sometimes when I am putting it on.