Clare’s comfy cardi

Clare’s twenty eight year old cable knit cardigan holds a special place in her heart and a permanent place in her wardrobe. Back in the day (as she nostalgically puts it) a twenty something Clare would team her cable knit cardi, made by her mother, with baggy jeans and loafer shoes. she wore it religiously, until it eventually went out of fashion at some point in the early 90s.

Despite the cardi’s fashion demise, Clare refused to throw out the timeworn favourite. Relegated now to lazy days around the house, the garment has become a treasured family item. The knitted button through, being the go-to garment of choice when feeling a little under the weather, became known as ‘the sick cardigan’; a phrase coined by her eldest daughter Sophie.

Now oversized and stretched from the years of use, each slip 1 Aran knit, has a story to tell. On more occasions than Clare cares to remember, the cardigan has seen her little ones bundled into the car, swaddled in the comforting wool, on late night dashes to the ‘out of hours’ doctor. It has seen cool summer evenings in Cornwall, mother and daughters huddled together all sharing one chair, one cardi and one memory; Clare’s mother and her daughters grandmother.

Clare’s fondest memory, and the most vivid, was wearing the chunky cardigan home from hospital after the birth of her second daughter Talia. In their first picture together there is the beloved cream cable cardi, ever present as the love between a mother and her daughter. “Some people may keep baby blankets and photographs; I keep my cardigan, to me it signifies my whole world knitted together so beautifully. It will stay with me forever and always.”

Sophie Maguire