I remember it well the day I start knitting that cardigan I was in the car on the way up the north to do some Christmas shopping. Now this was back in a time,  when you had to cross the border. You might get stopped and have to empty out the car, you know!!

Well I was terrified sitting in the back seat sandwiched between two friends Lorraine and Deirdre in the car. I was knitting away ninety to the dozen as we approached the boarder and they stopped us.

They asked why we were going across the border.  We told them it was for  Christmas shopping. They checked everything, license, tax and insurance and  bags.  This lasted twenty minutes.  A real test of patients , just before I got back to my knitting.

I was knitting the cardigan with a Cable stitch, for which you needed to keep  your  eye on the pattern. Every time you went over a bump, the needles and all would go up into the air. You would loose  your stitches and have to start again. But that’s what knitting is all about, you rip a few lines then knit them again.

So on so fourth until you have the cardigan knitted.The girls were lucky that they didn’t get stabbed with the needles!

My father was a docker along with some of his brothers from Fairview. When they were waiting on the boats to come into the docks  they would go into the pub  and have a pint and keep warm. At  the end of the day he have 2 or 3 pints or more, then he would get up on his high Nelly bike and start cycling home, not in a straight  line. I remember once  he got arrested for drunk cycling. But the guards only held him until he was sobered up. They said he was more of a hindrance to himself, than others.

Whenever he arrived home he expected his dinner to be in the table. we could all be sitting cosy watching television with my mam, and the next thing is, we would hear him coming in the back gate. We’d  all disappear, out the front door or upstairs to our bedroom. My Dad was prone to be irritable after a few pints, so we didn’t want to be part of that noisy conversation.

The cardigan was a gift for him, but he was the sort of man who never accepted many gifts. So most presents were not appreciated.

On Christmas morning, I gave him this cardigan, I thought it  would be thrown over the garden wall,  like a lot of other gifts in previous years, like socks, gloves, ties and slippers. But no I was pleasantly surprised.

That  cardigan lasted longer than I thought it would. Instead of putting on the heating. He wore the cardigan. He was like that, we got used to him over the years. He never said weather he liked it or not, but it lasted several years and it may have had a few slipped stitches, gathered over time.

He recently passed away and when we cleared out his wardrobe, hidden in the back of the shelf was this very cardigan that I made, with all these memories from all those years ago.🥲