I’m not sure if many of you remember, but one of my first posts here on SSJ was about my desire to make the Sara Lund sweater from Forbrydelsen. That was February, 2017. I took a basic colourwork knitting course with a friend (which I enjoyed!) and, because, lyfe, I guess, I promptly put my needles down for almost a decade.

Then, the snowball effect. Just before Christmas 2025, I took a trip to Eweknit to find something for my Crafty Secret Santa, an avid, experienced knitter, and fell under the shop’s spell of shade and texture. When my daughter came home for her holiday break, she announced she’d been knitting and asked me to take her back to the same store to choose the very fancy wool for her first real knitting project, a striped scarf. Bea was inspiring, encouraging me to choose a nice wool and a sure-win pattern for my first project, rather than doing any more “practicing,” since we all know where that led.

A few months later, and I have my first sweater, the Goldwing, by Jennifer Steinglass, in a soft DK merino, Daruma Genmou. It’s not the “murder sweater” I’d envisioned all those years ago. It’s more, better, now.