Cardigan Letter - Knitted Cardigans

I've never written anything like this before, and I'm not sure I'd have believed you if you'd told me I would. I taught in the same primary school for thirty-four years, and the only letters I ever wrote were notes home about missing PE gear. But I've told this story so many times lately that my husband says I should just write it down and be done with it.

When I retired, I didn't notice my wardrobe so much as my daughter did. She was home from London for a weekend, watched me putting on one of my old navy cardigans, and said, very gently, "Mam, you still dress like you're on yard duty."

You're served last at the counter. People look past you on the street. And I'd been helping it along, if I'm honest, in cardigans the colour of a wet Tuesday: navy, oatmeal, chalk-grey, all bobbled at the elbows from years of leaning on desks.

A few weeks later Niamh sent me a screenshot from London with one line: "This is SO you, Mam." It was a cream knitted cardigan covered in little wildflowers: red, orange and rust blooms on fine stems, with dark slate leaves rising up from the hem.

I grew up outside Clifden, and every August the roads there are lined with fuchsia and montbretia, red and orange as far as you can see. That's exactly what it looked like to me. The hedgerows of home, on a cardigan.

It was from Ellie Dublin, an online boutique Niamh had come across. I'd never bought clothes online in my life, you know yourself, but I sat down with the iPad that evening and ordered the Vintage Flower cardigan before I could talk myself out of it.

Its first proper outing was our Tuesday walk on the prom in Salthill with the walking group. It was one of those mornings with the wind coming straight in off the bay and a bit of sun trying its best, so I buttoned it right up.

We hadn't even reached Blackrock to kick the wall before Úna asked where I'd got it. Úna has walked beside me every Tuesday for eleven years and has never once commented on anything I've worn. In the café afterwards, the young one behind the counter said she loved my cardigan before she'd even taken my order.

I've worn it to book club, to my grandson's school play and to the shops on a Saturday. Over a white top with jeans, over a navy dress, round my shoulders in the garden in the evening. It goes with everything I already own.

I'll be honest, I was nervous about the price as much as the ordering. They're running their Early Autumn Sale at the moment, with up to 80% off right across the shop. The Vintage Flower cardigan is €44.95, down from €90.00. I was sure there'd be a catch, because a knit this soft usually costs a good deal more.

There's no catch that I've found. They're making room for their new collections, so the prices are down, and once a print sells out it's gone. And if it doesn't suit you, you have 30 days to send it back, which is what made me brave enough to press the button.

When Niamh came home for the October bank holiday, she tried mine on and wouldn't give it back. So we put in an order together for the extra discount, and she went back to London with the Vintage Bloom one, the cream one with the little blue birds. Now we match on our video calls.

I read the reviews before I ordered, the way I imagine you're doing now. The same things kept coming up: soft, warm without being heavy, and the colours are even nicer in person. This was the one that decided it for me:

If you've started to feel a bit invisible, and your wardrobe is full of cardigans you only keep because you need a layer, you're not imagining it, and you're not alone. Most of the women I know feel the same.

A cardigan won't change your life. But putting on something that feels like you, and having people actually see you in it, is a small thing I'd stopped expecting. I'd rather you didn't stop expecting it either.

The sale is on now and the nicer prints are going first. My old school cardigans have gone to the charity shop. I don't miss a single one.