Amazing and True: Raglan Sleeve Topper

This story is from our newletters called Pattern Journal which brings a warm-hearted, wholesome story to your inbox to read every month. We’re sharing the most recent story here in the blog. If you enjoy it and would like to subscribe, click here.

Some garments just call out to you, and this Raglan Sleeve Topper was one of them, Rose thought. But “raglan sleeve topper”was too modest a title for something so beautiful. To Rose it seemed a magical wrap that transformed the wearer into the best she could possibly be. It was obvious that your natural attributes—whether you were willowy or full-figured, long-or short-haired, enthusiastic or reserved—would be optimized by the form and colors of the gently curving sweater.

Rose didn’t believe in love at first sight, but her attraction to the design she saw online was close to that. The more she studied the image, the more she felt compelled. This was a must-do project. Yet there was some half-completed knitting that should take precedence: two baby gifts, an almost- done afghan, a hat for Dad’s birthday…

Uncharacteristically, she wasn’t dissuaded. She knew those things would be finished eventually, and…she really needed a sweater.

Actually…honestly…she really wanted to knit something just for herself.

After work she stopped at the mall to do some errands, and having purchased vitamins and soap at the pharmacy, wandered around the nearby craft-supply store, through the baskets, beads, and artificial flowers, and then, somehow, she was in the yarn department.

The yarn was called “Amazing,” and it was: soft and lofty to the touch, with transitioning colors like the dawn’s haze on distant mountains. To wear a sweater of this yarn would be like being wrapped in a luminous sunset cloud or caressed by an ethereal breeze.

It would be magical.

One of the wonderful things about life, Rose thought as she purchased her skeins of Amazing in the “Glacier Bay” colorway, is that even on the most ordinary day, you could imagine, knit, and finally wear something so beautiful that it dramatically transformed your world. That was where inspiration took you.

She could hardly wait to get home and start!

—

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Selma Moss-Ward is a freelance writer who combines her love of writing and of knitting in her columns, stories, and blog posts. Selma is also an active classical musician and the caretaker of five wonderful pets. She lives with them and her husband in Rhode Island.