Old friends

My parents are embarking on a major construction project at their place in Maine, so my mother has been going to town on the piles of Extremely Important Crap that my brother and I have been storing under their roof. She came across an old trunk of mine with a lock on it. Once we had determined that I had no clue as to the whereabouts of the key to said lock, we decided she had free rein to cut off the lock and see what was inside. Of course she promptly went back to Boston and found the key, so hacksaws were not called in to salvage the situation.

Inside the trunk she found these:

I knit these two sweaters almost twenty years ago when I was in college (and the fact that parts of college were almost twenty years ago totally gives me the heebie jeebies). The one on the top is a guernsey (I'm 95% sure it's Penny Straker's Staithes Gansey - Rav link). The yarn is some gorgeous tweedy teal worsted weight that we bought at the Blue Hill Fair one summer when I was in college and I went back to school and knit it up.

The bottom sweater is my first Aran, from a Candide pattern that I bought in 1991, if I remember correctly. Anyway, a long time ago. It's huge - probable 50 inches across in the chest, and I wore it as a winter jacket through most of college. Which, given that I went to college in western MA, belies the intelligence that presumably got me in to said school, but what can you do.

I have been wondering where these two sweaters were hiding for quite a while now. I don't think I've seen them since I finished grad school in 2000, and they are in remarkably good condition for having been stuffed in a trunk and stuck in a barn for 8 years. I certainly don't have any reason to wear them right now, but I'm glad I have them back. In fact, they've inspired me to start a new cable project.

I can't justify wool sweaters for Houston "winters", but a wool vest? That I can definitely get behind.