letter to a sweater

Dearest,

We’ve been through so much, you and I.

Do you remember when I first laid eyes on you, three years ago? In that Rebecca magazine at the yarn shop? I swooned over the fuzzy mohair-ness of you, and that modernish lace pattern of yours, and your lightness, your length. I fell so hard that I wrote a love story about it, and read it on a podcast.

But I wasn’t ready to commit. I was a beginner, and you were so intense. Just your name scared me: Coat with Lace Pattern. Not just the plainspoken German practicality of it, but the presence of both coat and lace in one name. Clearly you would be no small fling.

But what’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

It took me two years to feel confident enough to take you on. Finally, last September I gathered up ten balls of Sublime kid mohair at the yarn shop and embraced you right there.

It was so exciting in the beginning. All that experimentation, remember? Needles and swatches. You swept me off my feet.

And we had such passion early on. We were together constantly. Your sleeves flew off my needles like a spin around the dance floor. Soon I was climbing up your back, loving your lace. Then suddenly, sometime in November, something changed. All that lace. All those purl rows. I got bored. I got distracted.

So I dallied. There was the Pickle Hat in December, and the Toasty mitts in January. But you must believe that they meant nothing to me. Nothing. I never even took a photo of Toasty and me together for Ravelry.

By Valentine’s Day we were back together, and had that little second honeymoon up in the mountains. I finished your back and cast on for your fronts. That excitement carried us through for a while.

But we had issues. I won’t say we aren’t compatible, but I guess I need a little more from a sweater. You know I’m not a purl kind of girl. Too much of that and my eyes start wandering to other projects. And here I was, having to purl back every other row, all the way up your two…long…fronts. Some weeks we didn’t get together at all. Then there were those two weeks of constant bickering in April. I kept tinking back on your same lace row, again and again and again, and we still couldn’t get it right.

I’m sure all my friends at the park got tired of seeing us together week after week. Me so despondent, you so–unchanged.

But spring fever hit and we slowly became inseparable once again. You started to change in beguiling ways. You decreased! You lost your lace pattern! There was grafting and i-cording and even seaming was new and thrilling. And finally you were finished! We batted our eyelashes at each other and fell in love all over again.

We had those romantic photos taken in the garden. You were all over me.

You’re everything I dreamed you’d be. You’re delicate and airy and dramatic. But despite that halo, you’re hot stuff. (What more could I expect, given your mohair.) You’re longer than I thought you’d be, but, well, let’s not go there.

And that little brown cardigan you may have seen me messing around with lately? Don’t worry. She’s short. And simple.

There will never be another sweater like you.