Mittens, and hats, and even huggable bunny toys…these are all well and good. Accomplishments even. What separates the little girls from the Grown Ass Women? The real knitters from the dabblers? The bad asses from the run of the mill jackasses?

I will tell you: knitting an actual piece of clothing, a wearable piece of clothing. And today, I join that Grown Ass Women’s Knitting club. Someone needs to knight me with a pair of straight needles – barring that, I think I’ll just have a glass of champagne and snuggle with my dog.

For many years, I’ve tried and failed, in some cases spectacularly. I spent a weekend with a friend in Bloomington, Indiana (our menfolk were there separately on a bachelor party), knitting away on a cardigan, only to reveal that I apparently made a cardigan for a two-year old. I’ve also made sweater parts, only to fail in the grafting/sewing stage, and then ripped apart the work in deep and abiding frustration.

So what did I accomplish? An actually pretty gorgeous cardigan from Berrocco (although I did not use their yarn) called Aidez. It’s slightly long, mid-butt length, with long sleeves, no buttons, a semi-cowled-ish collar, and utterly awesome cables and mini-patterns. Ear of corn, trellis and cable patterns made this challenging but also supremely fun. The front panels have the ear of corn pattern, easy but very pretty in 8 rows, and the sleeves have sort of a variation on that theme in the seeded wishbone pattern. I can see myself repeating this for something else, a blanket maybe? The trickiest pattern was called simply the Left and Right Cross- Stitch Cable. You had to wrap the stitches twice around to create the cable, and drop them in the following RS row. Once I got the handle of it, it was fairly straightforward, but I guess I was expecting more from a all the work required of that cable pattern, hrm. It just kind of looked like a regular old cable. As Eddie Murphy said, “These are just some regular old crackers.”  I couldn’t find the Berrocco in a light oatmeal color as the pattern indicated but I found something similar, soft and off-white. The only challenge with this yarn was that it was a little fuzzy. But dang – over Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, I made this Grown Ass Woman’s sweater.

And huge hat tip to the lady who is responsible for the (apparently short lived but loved by me) Grown Ass Women’s Club, and always good to review her definition of Grown Ass Women. Take note, all you women under 35. Haters gonna hate. Grown Ass Women stand tall.