MHC Archives; Lynne Barrett
left: Knitting was all the rage at MHC in the 1940s (shown, students in MHC French House) below, left: Meredith Mudgett Hunter ’67 knits in Buckland Hall’s kitchen in the 1960s.
ambition that led me to attempt my first sweater? Wanting to try working with two colors, I adapted a men’s ski pullover with snowflakes up the sleeves. Only if you looked closely could you tell (maybe) that my white “snowflakes” were turtles. Turtle and I broke up in our senior year. The sweater had nothing to do with it. Only much later did I hear of the “boyfriend sweater curse,” the notion that making a sweater might mean doom. Or could it just be that a certain percentage of sweater-level relationships won’t survive? Before the break-up, I’d begun an afghan for my mother. Its lace pattern was complicated, and the color she chose, “antique gold,” seemed to me dull mustard. Before finishing it, I was in graduate school where no one knitted in class, ever. I discovered I’d been in a bubble at Mount Holyoke. Elsewhere, an un-grandmotherly woman who knitted in public was the object of suspicion. Men mentioned Madame Defarge. Interest in knitting had declined and crochetAuthor Lynne Barrett ’72 ing pretty much disappeared. In private, over knitted this for her nowtime, I made myself a cotton shell, a mohair husband when she was at shawl, a Perry Ellis sweater with pleated ’80s MHC, evading the dreaded shoulders. On trips, I’d search out a city’s only yarn shop, and find other women buying bags- “boyfriend sweater curse.”
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