When White Becomes Blue — A Christmas Tale
I bought a white wool cable sweater in 1991 that’s been loved for a while because it’s warmer than an arctic jacket. Throw on a windbreaker over top when it’s frigid, and the yellow wool cap picked up at a distance running event years ago, and I’m as happy as a husky in arctic temps. I expect I’ve sweated more than been chilled wearing this white sweater.
I bought the sweater on a trip we took to Ireland, myself, my girlfriend and two sons. Somewhere near Galway, strolling the street one evening, feeling full of dinner, we wandered into a clothing shop working the tourist trade. So we bought Irish wool sweaters.
Even Ryan, who hated wool saying it made him itch, so his was cotton.
His older brother bought a cable sweater close to mine, not quite cream, more of a natural hue.
Sean lent his one time to his Italian girlfriend, being one of those things you do to show the love. And she spilled a bit of something on it. It didn’t fit him so well after she had put it in the clothes washer. I don’t know if her being of Italian decent meant she didn’t know about Irish wool, or she didn’t know too much about washing. Most probably, she snuck it into the washer after hours without her mother yelling ‘stop!’
I have a few later photos of the couple standing handsome and beautiful before the prom. Hope she learned from the experience.
We had planned the trip to see if everybody could get along on a long vacation, always a telltale indicator if you’re to sign up for an extended tour — like till death and taxes — I think that’s the expression.
At that clothes store in Galway, my girlfriend picked out a blue one for herself. I’m sure she still has hers. Mine remains a go-to garment when it hits the lower digits. Yes, I understand, it was machine-made, but we’ll get to that.
Thus the intro, and here’s the true story.
D’s mother had taken up knitting again. Possibly she’d never stopped knitting, but I hadn’t seen her working at it. One Sunday after dinner at their place, after tea and baklava, she sat at her usual chair in the poor light of the living room, throwing stitch after stitch not noticing what her hands were doing, over, under, loop around, and over again, clicking those long needles like motor wheels.
I was fascinated. She managed a fair discussion while producing line after woven line, pausing to finish one, push the weave up the needles, or pull more yarn from the ball in her lap, scarcely bothering to see the product. She maintained a steady rhythm.
This project she was making was to be for someone she knew, or a client perhaps.
She had worked as a fulltime seamstress after arriving from Egypt. Now retired, she ‘played’ at it, taking in hems, adjusting waists, sewing new zippers onto old dresses, the usual variety. Sewing her daughter’s silk wedding gown, complete with lace and train wasn’t difficult, though she said the lace was tedious — and doesn’t everyone complain about lace?
As she whipped inch after inch of knitting that evening, she offhandedly asked if I needed a sweater. Needed? No. Wanted, yes.
D jumped in before I could respond, “Yes!” All this time, D has been trying to improve me.
What her mother needed was something to copy. On the following weekend, D drove her to a local yarn store, returning with several different balls of yarn and said ‘chose.’ I picked a wool died like blue denim, and handed over my beloved white sweater for her mother to get the size right. Like I knew how you count stitches as you go.
If I knew anything about knitting, offering a cable sweater with a half dozen very different patterns wasn’t exactly making it easy. But several weeks later, back again at D’s parents’ house, she asked me to look at the body she’d knitted. No sleeves yet and missing a collar; it was actually two halves yet to be brought together as a whole. But the amazing thing — to me — was how every single pattern had been matched by her version.
A week or so later, I had a new sweater, no label, and it fit like the one she had copied. Softer wool, and definitely not machine-made — it lacked the tighter tension — but a perfect replica of the original.
When I read of things soon to be lost to the ages, I suspect knitting, that ‘old lady’ clacking of needles’ may become one of those. And I wonder how many sons-in-law will be gifted such a sweater this year, let alone a hundred years from now.
A piece of her backstory as best I could tell it is here: Dawlat Awad
