I finally finished the cashmere sweater that I mentioned in a previous post.

The stitches in this sweater have so many memories and I am so happy that I can reflect back on the time I spent preparing the yarn and knitting. I began working on it in June and finished in August 2013 and it is representative of my favorite summer to date.

I spent time “de-hairing” the cashmere in the Human Ecology building @ Cornell while listening to Beyonce in early July. When David came, we “de-haired” the yarn near Six Mile Creek, and in my apartment.

I learned how to make this sweater from Kiko at Knitting Etc and I remembered how nice she always is, which made it even more delightful to knit the sweater.

I knitted while in my apartment, mostly watching “Lost” or “The L Word” on Netflix. It was an interesting experience to concentrate on not dropping stitches, remembering to increasing, marking finished rows, and remembering to cable at the right rows. Doing this while watching “Lost” was fun especially since the show has so many suspenseful points and the progress of my knitting helped stimulate further anticipation.

While I was knitting, I visited the Laughing Goat Fiber Farm and got to interact with the cashmere goats that contributed to the fibers that make up the sweater. Seeing the goats further motivated me to continue to work with the yarn and finish the sweater.

After I finished knitting the sweater, David took photographs of my sister wearing it (for my MA thesis) outside of the Human Ecology building. On that day, there was wonderful foliage (background of photo) along the terrace. It was the first time I’d ever seen it there. I’m glad we took the photograph on this day because 2 days later, the beautiful leaves and white flowers were trimmed and gone with school starting.

Everything from “de-hairing” the cashmere, knitting, visiting the farm, and getting photographs taken of my work added value to my production process.

I’ve been a fashion design student for 8 years now (including high school) and it is first time I have made something with so much meaning based on connections with the raw material itself – in this case cashmere, connections with the farmer that helped cultivate the fibers – Lisa Ferguson, and care in production with the fibers processed in the Salt City Fiber Mill in Syracuse, and the help I obtained in preparing the yarn for knitting from David, my wonderful and loving boyfriend.

I am so happy with the outcome of this sweater. This includes the product itself, the experience making it, and the memories associated with the entire process.

I am currently working on an alpaca version of this sweater. Even though the design is the same, it has an entirely different set of memories associated with it. I will post it when I finish.