My Brothers Christmas Sweater

99% Shetland Wool
1 % Weebie
The story of this sweater started on a warm late spring day in Colorado. The trees were turning green, the sky was blue, and Jason decided to take his wife to the Estes Park Wool Festival.
You lived here before, you know the scenic drive winding through the mountains to the little town tucked away in the valley of Long's Peak.
We wandered in to the fairgrounds, not knowing what to expect. Jace just wanted to make his wife happy, and his wife was definitely happy at the prospect of seeing fuzzy farm animals.
We wandered through barns full of sheep, goats, llamas, rabbits and the alpacas your sister would be assaulted by a year from then. We took pictures of their doe brown eyes, I pet the greasy and unexpectedly stinky fur, and all was right with the world.
There was an indoor market at the festival. I didn't want to go in because I knew we were broke. I peeked in the door and saw a lot of men standing at the outskirts looking tolerant, and rabidly milling women scurrying from stall to stall to see what was for sale. I wanted to go in and touch all of the soft fleeces, and get caught up in the excitement and festival atmosphere inside. I hesitated in the door, and Jace told me he had stashed a way a little bit of money for me to buy some wool.
Unlike the other men who looked vaguely uncomfortable while watching the frothing women in the market, Jace followed me through from stall to stall, letting me stick my hands in greasy bags of fleece, asking a gazillion questions of the sellers and making sure that the money he stashed would not be wasted and would go as far as possible.
Three trips around the market and one assault by an old woman on Jace later, I settled on 2 bags of shetland fleece. Raw. I will explain raw later, but then and there, I wanted to know what it was like to make yarn from the sheep up. I hopped back to the car, with two huge trashbags full of fleece in my fists. The sheep your vest came from was named Coco-Puff by the way.
The car smelled like sheep all the way home.
The house smelled like sheep the next day. Sheep in pictures are cute, even idyllic. Sheep in actuality are filthy, and will roll in just about anything they can find. Those big fluffy curly lanolin soaked greasy fleeces hold it all in too.
For 2 days, I tore off chunks of fleece, dunked it in steaming hot water full of dish soap, stirred it slowly around, drained the tub and repeated that process 3 more times. After it was all washed and rinsed, I hung it in big net sacks to dry, proud of my accomplishment. I wondered how women before the industrial age did it. It was a hobby for me, a survival necessity for them. They also probably washed fleeces outside and didn't piss their husbands off by clogging the entire drainage system of the upper floor of the house doing this either.
Really, I am almost done with the technical aspect of this and will get to the good part shortly...
After the fleece was all dried and fluffy (and a lot less smelly) I took out the hand cards Jerry bought me last year for Christmas. I will leave out the second statement of admiration for pre-industrial women. Carding wool involves taking the tangled mess that washing a fleece causes, and making nice little cigar shaped rolls of wool that you can spin. Yay!
Not that I am going for some sort of martyr record, but it takes about 3 hours to decently card a pound of wool. Another salute to the women of old..seriously.
Mom came to visit while I was still carding, she was reading her magazines and I was sitting on the porch providing a sound track of whiff whiff whiff scraaaatch. It was a lot of work, but I am sure I looked happier than this woman, who probably had to do it all day and didn't have cable TV:
It was all taken to the wheel and spun, mostly sitting by the fireplace watching Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Cosmos.
Aside from perusing the library for the perfect pattern, and requesting the frequent help of the knitting goddess Tamara, that accounts for the 99% shetland of this vest.
Oh yeah..and a funny story about Tamara, who is my best knitting buddy/teacher, and spinning friend right now:
I took your vest to the stitch and bitch to get her to check it, make sure I am doing everything right (it is after all, the first knit item that I am making that isn't square or rectangular). I proudly plopped down the back of the vest that I had finished and asked her to inspect the work. The conversation went something like this:
Tam: “ Good job. Your brothers a big guy like us then?”
Me: “ Ummmmmm...nooooo. Not really.
Tam: “ Huh. You knittin this for an elephant then?”
Me: “.....mumble incoherently”
Tam: “ Well, let me see what we can do with this”
After about 5 minutes of consulting with other knitters, and ideas such as stretching it on the rack medieval style, felting it, or maybe making the front skinnier, it was determined that the entire thing would have to be frogged.
Most non-knitters have no idea what the term frogging means. It was painful to hear it that night. I went next door to the coffee shop that Jace was sitting at and cried. I told him Tam was being mean. He said good, and sent me back over to deal with it. Frogging means, tearing out all of your stitches..all the way back to the beginning balls of yarn. The term comes from the act of rip-it...rip-it..you get it right?
I went back to the yarn shop, sat down next to Tam, and began silently unraveling my 2 weeks worth of work. I was so bummed I texted mom, and sent her the sad picture of the result of my frogging:

At least I had some coffee to drink now, and a big chocolate brownie.
Now...about the weebie part, and this is the important part.
I like to believe that when you create something for someone, there is a piece of your thoughts and your energy (for lack of a better term) that stays with the object.
Of course, in our family we know about weebies. We send them out, wish them for each other and joke about them. Joking or not, I like to think that the piece of myself left in a creation is guided while creating it. It is like a meditation..the thoughts and memories in my head flow down my arms, through my hands, in to the needles and permeate the endless loops of yarn that become fabric. Here are the ones that went in to yours:

Walking to the bus stop from the pool in the summer with towels wrapped around our heads and goggles over them pretending we were Star Wars characters from the Cantina.
Endless summer games of hide and seek, softball, kick the can, and kickball with neighborhood kids.
Martian Sundaes.
Getting the Wishbook catalogue every year, and pouring through the pages circling everything we wanted Santa to leave under the tree.
Sleeping on a bean bag in your room Christmas Eve staying up as late as possible watching “It's a Wonderful Life”.
Then sneaking up early in the morning to see if the stockings were full.
Mosey laying on the paper you were reading on the living room floor..and you playing dentist with him so we could laugh at how he rolled around wiping his paws on his nose.

The time we left fake poop on the living room floor as a prank.
You coming to my defense when I got ganged up on in middle school.
Trying to teach me how to drive in your old blue truck, and me almost wiping out a dog and 2 skate boarders.
Hanging out with you and your band. I got to feel cool and adult, and you never seemed embarrassed to have me along.
Endlessly picking on you when you had a girlfriend over.
Hanging out with you at your first apartment in Denver. How cool and big city it all seemed and made me want to live there.
Moving to Denver and hanging out even more...going to coffee shops, meeting your friends..the first Christmas party we had at your house that I made posole for..and you and I were the only ones that could eat it.
The “beginner hike” up Herman Gulch, and chocolate chip peanut butter bagel sandwiches..which were the best things I had ever tasted after that hike!
Our fishing trip where the dogs tried to tie you up while you were setting up your tent. We didn't catch any fish because Max kept chasing the lure in to the water, the adventure on the “2 person” inflatable raft and how I almost sunk it by getting my hook stuck in it and breaking the oar, trying to get the fire started at high altitude, eating almost raw steaks and peanut butter pretzels because potatoes take 4 hours to cook at altitude, watching your tent jerk around when I scared the bejeezus out of you by accidentally setting my car alarm off in the middle of the night (and the headlights just happened to be aimed at your tent) and the groggy next morning getting stuck in the mud while we tried to fish one more time.
Going to see the Russian Ballet's Nutcracker.
You being here for the birthday when you all pitched in for my spinning wheel.
And the end result of spinning the yarn that made the sweater I was knitting for you.
If I put all of the memories down...it would take months if not years to write. But memories in your head are fluid and escape time. So fluid that the warm comfort and joy of experiencing them again flow right in to the vest you are creating.
As I finished the last stitches, and pondered over the “just right” buttons for it, I realized that I wanted more than anything for you to find someone in your life that would appreciate all of the things that made up the brother I have such awesome memories of growing up with. Life has many changes and branches, and I wanted you to find someone that would love the adventure of being with you.
In my mind, I pictured you wearing the vest while having coffee with that someone, a golden glow of a perfect moment surrounding you both, and somewhere many miles away, the happy smile of your little sister knowing you had met your match and she was too old now to intentionally irritate and annoy that perfect person..but instead would do a little happy dance for the brother that has been by her side her whole life.
May your adventures be grand, I am glad you are my brother!