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| Royal College Aran |
The photo is from a "Fashion Workshop" collection of ideas for things to make published by a long-defunct UK fashion magazine, Over21, in Autumn/Winter 1973. It included several knitting patterns, including this one, titled Royal College Aran. The blurb says "Fresh from a design course at the Royal College of Art, Susan Duckworth turned her talents to the traditional and folksy charm of Aran, slicked up with a '74 shape and doughboy pockets."
I loved the look of this sweater when I first saw it, and how it made Aran stylish. My sister and I both knitted it for ourselves.
By then I had already knitted myself several jumpers, though I can't remember most of them, and I had knitted a traditional Aran jumper - they had become very popular round about then for women, I think for the first time. That first Aran jumper no longer survives - I must have worn it out eventually. (In my memory, winters were a lot colder then, partly because my parents' house had no heating except in two downstairs rooms. So an Aran jumper got a lot of wear.)
I still have my Royal College Aran and wear it. The design looks fresh and current to me, even now (though it seems rather quaint to read that it's a 1974 shape, as if that makes it new and exciting). I have just packed it away for the summer, but I will add a photo later.
(Much, much later - in fact January 2013.) I have been wearing the jumper again this week because it has been very cold. It still looks up-to-date, I think, in spite of being nearly 40 years old. You can see that I made a couple of changes: I did a twisted rib instead of a plain rib. I made the cuffs ribbed, too, instead of stocking stitch, and just had a single turn-back, instead of turning it over twice as shown. And I continued the honeycomb cable up to the shoulder seams. It is still very nice to wear.
