Day 6 something to aspire to

So Day 6 of knit and crochet blog week...We were asked to write about a skill we want to have, something we aspire to knit. Well. Have you seen my kids' Irish Sweaters? Yeah I didn't knit them. The story goes that some old aunt made them many many many years ago (possibly as long as 43 yrs ago but definitely at least 39 years ago because according to my mother my older brother wore one of them when he was a kid) for my siblings. Apparently there is a red one that is the same pattern floating around somewhere too...I like the image of some old Irish lady knitting red, white and blue arans for her Yankee relations. These sweaters are wool. Old school wool that is slightly scratchy and still smells like a sheep. I love them and am not giving them up to anyone (I am still slightly bitter that my mom gave a sibling or a friend a handknit cardigan with Big Bird on the back, a cardigan I loved as a kid and really wanted to save for my future kids- see even before I could knit I had a love of the handknit). I let the kids wear them as spring and fall coats and spend countless hours washing the mud out of them. I meticulously darned the million moth holes in the blue one, and pack them away at the end of the season with cedar satchels tucked into the sleeves. I want them to last another 40 years true, but I want to replicate them if they don't last.

But anyway these two sweaters are like all that is left of this old aunt, who no one remembers.

I want that. I want to make identical sweaters for my grandkids (cause let's face it by the time I actually get around to doing cables this intricately I will be older and greyer then I am now). I want the sweaters I make to be handed down to the great grandkids, the cousins etc until some random relative owns them and can only say "oh yeah they have been in the family forever, some aunt or something who is most likely dead now made them" when asked about them on the street.

You know that story Elizabeth Zimmermen tells about the fishermen sweaters being knit in specific patterns so when the body washed up on shore they could identify it? Yeah apparently it is somewhat true, cause recently I was stopped by an elderly lady who said "Oh yer people are from Galway are they?" Just by looking at the kids' sweaters she could tell. I was at the Vogue Knitting event and there was a booth with aran knits who were selling sweaters of the EXACT SAME pattern as ours; I asked if I could buy said pattern (you know so I could start knitting for the grandkids? yeah the ones who are lightyears in the future...) and was told "oh they are just in the heads of our knitters, they don't write them down."

So maybe I'll just buy some for the grandkids. Let them think I knit them...