I sat down before Christmas and decided I was going to knit myself a Liverpool FC sweater. There is a deplorable lack of fan craft in the world of sports, and also a deplorable lack of decent fan clothing options for women, where everything either has to be pink or otherwise horribly designed. These are things I can rectify!
The pattern I used as the basis for the sweater is True North by Amy Swenson because I wanted to make a cardigan with a big shawl collar. The redesigned charts are made up of references to club history and identity.
The photo at the top of the post is of the sleeve cuffs, which both say “YNWA” and which is short for “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, the club’s theme song and de facto motto. I’m not too proud to admit I have openly wept when singing this song at a game.
The Liver bird is the symbol of Liverpool and features prominently on the club crest, and so it does here as well. The bird was stitched using a duplicate stitch after knitting the entire sweater, as the red yarn I used had a different elasticity than the other yarns and it was incredibly challenging to knit the bird by stranding it along with the rest of the motifs. (I tried. Twice. Ripped it out both times.)
They grey motifs in the background are based on some Turkish knitting patterns I found. I wanted an overall pattern rather than a solid background for the bird, and I liked the the symmetry and contrast I kept finding in Turkish motifs. And, of course, the Turkish patterns tie nicely into the Miracle at Istanbul, Liverpool’s miraculous comeback to win Champions League in 2005.
Liverpool has a proud history of success in European Competition, having won the European Cup five times. The years they won each cup are commemorated along the front of the sweater. L4 represents the postal code of Anfield, the club’s hallowed playing ground.
My absolute favourite Liverpool song of all time is “Poor Scouser Tommy“, which tells the tale of a young man who gets shot by the Nazis on the front lines and who, in his dying moments, starts to profess his love for his club. My favourite lines are “We support a team that’s dressed in red, a team that we all know, a team that we call ‘Liverpool’ and to glory we will go.”
It took about a month to to put together the charts and then just over another month to actually knit the sweater. I liked the original pattern enough that I might make it again (sans thematic content). This is the first sweater I’ve completed, and I feel like for someone who has only been knitting for a year, it’s a pretty decent accomplishment.
That is all kinds of awesome!
the bird is beautiful!!