An Curragh

I think one of my favorite catalogs is from An Curragh. This organization allows artisans from the Northwest of Ireland to sell their wares to national and international clients. Their catalogs are a nice read, and there are two good sessions from Christmas 2006 that I want to include here. They are both related to knitting and knitwears:

"Inspired by necessity, the function of an Aran sweater was to protect from the force of the ocean. But, being a race of yarn spinners, in word and cloth, we have made it so much more. Written with needles, spun out on a thread, every sweater maps a story ~ of tightly nestled fields, bounded by the cables of the fishing trade, or the honeycomb of the worker bee hanging over a web of nets drying on stonewalls." p.50

"We say our knitting tradition started with stockings. Clever us, matching a fabric that retained its warmth when wet to the foot that spent its life ankle-deep in bogs! Then we found that the natural oil on the wool (lanolin) is waterproof, that wool draws vapor away from the body, that it readily absorbs colour and that it can be stitched into designs that capture air for insulation. But the hand-knit is more than practical. It's an art form that starts with the carding of fleece and finishes when the last stitch is cast off." p.116