Is he sweater-worthy?
Or where have all the sweaters gone?
Until I knit my husband's sweater after almost eight years of marriage, I had knit only one other sweater for a guy (two, if you count the machine knit gansey I made for a boyfriend who promptly gained 30 pounds, rendering the sweater useless). I gave Art his dark grey lopi for Christmas when we were in college. I had knit like a fiend to finish it and remember being surprised at how easy those gorgeous Icelandic yokes were to knit. He was my best friend.
Two years later Art announced he as gay and became "Arthur." He moved to New Orleans for law school and I suspect he left the lopi with his brother in Colorado or folded it in a drawer where it became a hearty meal for moths. He's dead now, so I can't ask.
That's the problem with sweaters. We don't equip them with microchips so they can alert us to their fates. And often they outlast the relationships and people we seek to warm. I know where most of the old boyfriends and loved ones have gone, but not the sweaters. I wonder about them like dandelion seeds caught in a breeze. Where are they? Good Will? The dumpster? Clothing a widowed lover? An ex wife?
The curse of the love sweater is a well-known knitters' myth. It goes like this: knit a man a sweater prior to marriage and the relationship will surely end. I asked an older knitter once if she had knit her current boyfriend a sweater. She said, after two sweaters and two divorces, no way.
A sweater, as we all know, is a commitment of time, money and love. Men can smell this on a garment, and more than the wool, alpaca or acrylic from which it's made, that makes them sweat. It frightens them. Deep down they know someone thought of them while creating every single stitch and they worry that it will ensnare them like a sticky web.
Sweaters become tethers, linking us forever to the people for whom we knit. Is he sweater-worthy? Not until you have a ring on your finger. Not unless you don't care that he forgets it in a drawer or gives your heart and handiwork to his next girlfriend.
I'll never regret knitting Art that sweater. But I will always wonder where it is. And why someone so good and kind and tasteful had to die so painfully and so young.
I know the location of my husband's sweater. It sits in his bottom dresser drawer waiting for the cool weather. There's a lot to be said for that.
9:37:50 AM 
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