the giant 500g hank of yarn from the Naturally Colored Wool Growers Assoc. of Vic. — the *giant* 500g hank of yarn from the Naturally Colored Wool Growers Assoc. of Vic.

I bought this yarn for $40AUD at the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show in 2015. I spent that weekend with Nan Bray after an out-of-the-blue email I sent introducing myself to her. We talked about “the co-ops” at UC Berkeley, our shared memories of a university campus some 30 odd years apart. I learned what a “sweater quantity” of wool was, and learned that day 3 is the day you’ll find more of the neutral toned yarns at a big 3-day yarn festival. The memories I have of this weekend are so precious to me, friendships kindled, time spent alone on trains, all the silly and practical knowledge gathered about yarn.

I bought this yarn and a few other precious skeins - a couple of hanks of Tarndie yarn (the birthplace of the sheep breed, Polworth) that became hats for friends - trades for Close Knit’s logo (thank you, edie) and trades for beeswax-treated canvas bags, a bright yellow naturally-dyed beanie I wore happily for ages & eventually passed on to a 4 year old (I have a small head). But this giant hank - I’d never seen anything like it before - came as a single 500g unit. It traveled with me from Bendigo to Sydney, to Hobart, then via the post back to California - from Oakland, to Carmel Valley, to LA and back again.

the yarns I bought from Bendigo, in their various forms as beanies for friends and my first knitting pattern I sold online.

In late 2018 (early Nov, it appears, from my camera roll), I finally decided on a sweater to make it into for myself - a Vanilla Heirloom by Verena Cohrs - a simple raglan with a nice twisted rib. I downloaded the free pattern after subscribing to her newsletter, excited that my yarn and needles just so happened to achieve gauge right away.

The time I spent knitting that sweater was dotted with periods of intense anxiety and doubt, the bulk of the body I knit during a weekend trip with a former partner that left me feeling worn down and sad. My parents came to visit the day after to celebrate my birthday - I cried into my mother’s chest as she held me.

About a month after I finished the sweater, I went through a breakup. The sweater fit, it looked nice, even, but I found that I rarely wore it. I wonder now if I was distancing myself from this object that was so deeply intertwined with the memory of that relationship.

In 2019, I knitted the leftover parts of the yarn (somehow my “sweater quantity” produced a sweater + more! I was delighted with my purchase) into various things-I-am-making-for-no-baby-in-particular. Wool soakers for imagined cloth diapers, wooly overalls to cover wee legs. They sat in amongst the other baby clothes I am keeping safe (hoarding?). It all just sat for all of 2019 and most of 2020, lavender satchets guarding them from moths.

One of the things that got me interested in knitting was something I read in an interview Rachel Rutt did with Wool and the Gang in 2013ish - she recalled a family friend unraveling her handknit sweaters and making them anew as her children outgrew them. Something about the simplistic genius of that really struck me, and still does. Such a brilliantly thrifty, hopeful, and care-laden act. This property of wool, it’s elasticity, its resiliency is one of the things that drew me in (and still does).

I haven’t knit all that many sweaters in my life- maybe 1-2 a year for the last 5 years, a few of which I sold when I moved to California to lighten my load. I don’t need to be knitting myself very many sweaters, but it is such a joyful act of devotion and care to oneself, I just like to do it every so often. And because I am very particular and I also don’t like buying more yarn when I have good yarn in my home, I thought that unraveling it to make something new made the most sense. After all, everything else in my life changed since I started it (I fell in love, moved three times, started a different job) why not the sweater, too?

(see the unraveling, pt 2 - a new sweater here)