Short fiction · 1,050 words
1. PROLOGUE: THE AUCTION HOUSE WHISPER
It began, as many curiosities do, under the flicker of chandelier light and the murmur of polite applause. Lot 43—a battered hatbox—rested on a velvet cushion at Wren & Coe’s Auctioneers in York. Inside lay what experts described merely as “an unusual knitted garment of indeterminate origin.” Bidding started at ten pounds. It ended at two thousand, purchased by an anonymous phone bidder who offered no name, only a Newcastle delivery address.
That, dear reader, is where I enter the yarn. My name is Margot Blythe, freelance curator of textile oddities, and that phone bidder was me. But I wasn’t prepared for what waited inside the hatbox: a cardigan whose pattern seemed to shift with each breath of light—hydrangea one moment, starlit constellations the next. A label stitched into the collar read only: If found, continue the story.
I have spent the last six months unravelling that story. This is the chronicle of a knit that changed wardrobes, destinies, and perhaps a little piece of history.
2. CHAPTER ONE: THE MAP WITHIN THE MOTIF
On my first evening home, I spread the cardigan across my studio floor and traced the jacquard motifs with a jeweller’s loupe. Between blooms and spirals I noticed an irregular line of cobalt stitches—tiny arrows, almost. When charted on graph paper, they formed the outline of Britain’s North East coast.
At each arrow tip, the blue shifted to crimson, as though marking locations. I cross‑referenced these points with historic textile mills. One address matched a defunct dye house in Alnwick, rumoured to have hidden contraband silk during wartime. Adventure, it seemed, had chosen me as much as I had chosen the knit.
3. CHAPTER TWO: DYE VAT GHOSTS
Alnwick’s mill, abandoned since the 1970s, greeted me with broken windows and a chorus of pigeons. Among rusted vats, I found a ledger sealed in wax. Each entry listed hues—“Bog Myrtle Brown,” “Moonlit Heather”—beside women’s names and dates spanning a century. The final page bore the same cryptic phrase from the cardigan’s label.
I photographed the ledger and compared the colour recipes with the garment’s palette: a perfect match. Every woman named in the ledger had contributed a shade, knitting a section before passing it on. The cardigan was not a garment; it was a relay baton.
4. CHAPTER THREE: LETTERS IN LAVENDER INK
Further clues surfaced in Newcastle’s Lit & Phil Society. The personal papers of textile‑artist Ida Green (ledger date 1952) included lavender‑ink letters to “Dear Future Wearer.” She wrote of smuggling coded instructions within knit rows during WWII—messages for resistance couriers too risky to send on paper. My cardigan’s cobalt‑crimson arrows? Coordinates to safe houses.
Ida’s closing line sent a shiver through me: “One day, someone will finish the last row and free the story.” The hem of my cardigan, I realised, lay bound off yet deliberately loose—room for one more row.
5. CHAPTER FOUR: THE STITCH THAT FREED A SONG
I packed knitting needles and a thermos of tea, then rode the Metro to Tynemouth pier. The North Sea roared a welcome as gulls traced circles above. There, at the easternmost coordinate, I cast on twenty stitches in sea‑foam yarn and added a single garter row to the hem. Nothing exploded, no hidden compartment clicked. Instead, the cardigan seemed… lighter—as though air coursed between its fibres.
On my journey home, my phone pinged an email from an unknown sender: “Thank you for completing the circle. Meet me where wool meets water.” Attached was a grainy photo of the cardigan spread on a driftwood bench.
How had anyone seen? Unless the knit itself had eyes.
6. CHAPTER FIVE: THE KNITTERS’ CIRCLE
That night, beneath the High Level Bridge in Newcastle, I found a firelit gathering of women—ages ranging from university student to great‑grandmother—each wearing hand‑knits brimming with clandestine motifs. Their unofficial name: The Loop. They’d safeguarded the cardigan for generations, auctioning it whenever it felt “restless” so a new custodian might discover its code.
I passed the hatbox across the flames. Their leader, Helena, added a final label under the collar: unique cardigans for women—a signpost to anyone yearning for individuality stitched with lineage.
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because you listened to the threads,” Helena said.
7. EPILOGUE: THE MUSEUM WITH NO LOCKS
The cardigan now resides in the North East People’s Museum—not behind glass, but on an open hanger labelled “Borrow Me.” Visitors can sign it out for a week, provided they add one row in a colour that tells their story. Some rows bear coded activism; others, heartbreak confessions in soft lilac or neon green hope. The garment grows longer, stranger, all the more alive.
Every time it returns, I document the new stitches in a digital archive—photographs, hex codes, personal notes—ensuring that one day, scholars will trace a century of voices loop by loop.
If you find yourself at the museum and feel the cardigan’s weight in your hands—part history lesson, part treasure map—remember Ida Green’s words: finish the last row and free the story. The knit will never truly be finished, and that is its genius. It leaves room for you.
So pick your yarn. Maybe it’s the russet of fresh‑turned soil after planting courage, or perhaps the dusky pink of a dawn promise you’ve sworn to keep. Whatever hue you choose, make it bold. Make it yours. And when you pass the cardigan on, whisper to the next wearer: If found, continue the story.
Margot Blythe is a curator of living textiles and believes every garment holds a pulse. She thanks The Loop for trusting her with a legacy of wool and wonder.
