Shamrock

It’d sounded cliche when he said it: pictures didn’t do it justice; the color green really is different there. And when I carried him back to Ireland, to that impossibly green grass, although he was gone, so very gone, dad was there with me, hand on my shoulder, guiding my wet, beat-up sneakers along the cliffside, keeping the clay and silt from crumbling into the rocks below. And I knelt, five paces back from the edge, and poured his ashes into a divet, impossibly still even in the howling wind. I wondered if I’d ever be back, ever find the spot again, this unmarked memorial, between O’Brien’s tower and Branaunmore, peering down on a thin strip of tawny beach. I sent a photo to a cousin next July like a roughshod map, and he took off from Doolin, hopping the fences, passing horses and sheep. He looked to the embankment, where I had laid a piece of my father to rest, and sent back a picture: that same curve of cliff, that same divot, now a blanket of clover and golden gorse.

Words by Caitlin Ghegan

For more information about our yarn bases and spinning fibers, including care instructions, please visit our Yarn Bases page.

Please note that, due to the nature of hand-dyed yarn, no two skeins of yarn will be exactly alike. I recommend alternating skeins every few rows for projects using multiple skeins of the same colorway. If you order multiple skeins of the same colorway, I will do my best to select skeins that are the closest match.

I dye each skein with professional acid dyes and leave the yarn in the dye bath until the dye has exhausted before rinsing and soaking in wool wash. Minor color bleeding may occur on the first wash, especially with extremely dark colors.

Although I do my best to accurately represent each colorway in product photos, please note that the colors may vary depending on monitor and/or device settings.