"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 68"
The Atlantic wind howled across the stone walls of Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands, where crashing waves carved cliffs into jagged teeth and sheep grazed on windswept pastures. Su Yao's boat rocked into the harbor, passing fishermen in currachs (traditional rowboats) mending nets, until it reached a village of whitewashed cottages with thatched roofs. In a cottage with a peat fire smoking from its chimney, a group of weavers sat on wooden chairs, their hands flying over knitting needles as they worked thick wool into intricate patterns. Their leader, a woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a cable-knit Aran sweater named Brigid, looked up as they entered, holding a finished sleeve adorned with diamond motifs and rope-like cables. "You've come for the Aran jumper," she said, her Gaelic lilt carried on the wind, gesturing to piles of sweaters folded beside a spinning wheel.
The Gaelic people of the Aran Islands have crafted Aran sweaters for over 200 years, a craft born from the harsh coastal environment and fishing traditions. The Aran jumper— a thick, cable-knit sweater—serves as both protection against the elements and a living language: each family's pattern tells their story, with cables representing fishing ropes, diamonds symbolizing the island's stone walls, and honeycombs signifying beekeeping heritage. Woven from unwashed wool (which retains natural lanolin for waterproofing) shorn from island sheep, each sweater requires up to 100 hours of work, with knitters memorizing patterns passed down through generations. The knitting process includes prayers to Saint Brigid (patron of weavers) for safe voyages, and women sing sean-nós (old-style songs) while working to "infuse the wool with warmth." Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this maritime craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Gaelic traditions while adding durability to the wool fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "island resilience" and "innovation" was as different as the rough Atlantic and calm Mediterranean.
Brigid's granddaughter, Saoirse, a 27-year-old who ran a heritage center while studying maritime history, held up a sweater with a pattern of interlocking waves and anchors. "This is for the Regatta Festival," she said, tracing the motifs that honor the island's fishing fleet. "My grandmother knit it during Imbolc (February festival) when the sea begins to calm—too many cables, and it brings tangled nets; too few, and the wearer loses strength. You don't just make Aran jumpers—you weave the sea's stories into wool."
Su Yao's team had brought electric knitting machines and synthetic wool blends, intending to mass-produce simplified Aran patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "coastal luxury" fashion line. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-knit cable motifs, the women stopped working, their needles clattering to the stone floor. Brigid's brother, Seamus, a 70-year-old fisherman with a face weathered by salt spray and a hand missing two fingers from a rope accident, stood and slammed his fist on the table. "You think machines can capture the anam (soul) of the sea?" he roared, his voice competing with the wind. "Aran jumpers carry the sweat of fishermen and the tears of women waiting on the shore. Your metal has no sweat, no tears—it's a shipwreck, not a sweater."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Gaelic knitters shear sheep during the summer solstice, leaving the first fleece as an offering to the sea god Manannán mac Lir to "bless the wool with waterproofing." The wool is carded using wooden tools carved from driftwood, and spun on wheels made from ship timbers. Dyes are made from plants and seaweed gathered along the shore: bladderwrack for olive green, heather for purple, and lichen for gray, with each batch stirred with a rowing oar to "infuse it with the ocean's rhythm." The seaweed-metal blend, despite its marine origins, was viewed as an outsider. "Your thread comes from deep seas that drown sailors, not our island waters," Brigid said, dropping the sample into a bucket of saltwater. "It will never keep a fisherman warm in a storm."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the lanolin in the wool, turning it sticky and causing the fibers to mat. "It angers Manannán," Saoirse said, holding up a ruined swatch where the cable pattern had clumped. "Our Aran jumpers grow softer with each storm, like a well-used net. This will stiffen like barnacle-encrusted wood, endangering anyone who wears it."
Then disaster struck: a violent winter storm battered the islands, flooding the wool storage shed and sweeping away decades of hand-spun yarn. The knitters' wooden needles—some carved from 19th-century shipwrecks—were damaged by saltwater, and their supply of rare indigo dye (traded from Scotland) was destroyed. With the Oyster Festival approaching, when new sweaters are traditionally worn, the community faced a crisis of both warmth and identity. Seamus, performing a ritual to calm the sea by burning seaweed and reciting Gaelic prayers, blamed the team for disturbing the natural balance. "You brought something cold from the deep to our shores," he chanted, as spray from the storm hit the cottage windows. "Now the sea is angry, and it takes back our wool."
That night, Su Yao sat with Brigid by the peat fire, where a pot of seafood chowder simmered, filling the air with the scent of mussels and smoky bacon. The walls were hung with Aran sweaters and framed photos of fishermen lost at sea, and a small shrine held a statue of Saint Brigid and a vial of seawater. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping hot whiskey laced with honey. "We came here thinking we could honor your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Brigid smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of soda bread slathered with butter. "The storm is not your fault," she said. "The sea gives and takes—that's how we know she's alive. My grandmother used to say that even wet wool can be dried, like a drowned sailor's story can be retold. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to show that Aran jumpers can weather new storms, without losing our island heart. Young people buy cheap sweaters from Dublin. We need to show them our knitting still speaks to the sea."
Su Yao nodded, hope flickering like the peat fire. "What if we start over? We'll help rebuild the wool shed on higher ground, salvage the wet yarn, and gather new seaweed for dye. We'll learn to knit Aran patterns by hand, using your sean-nós songs. We won't copy your family motifs. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your cables with our ocean waves, honoring both your islands and the sea. And we'll let Seamus bless the metal thread with a boat launch ceremony, so it carries the sea's favor."
Saoirse, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her boots leaving saltwater prints on the floor. "You'd really learn to knit the blackberry stitch? It takes months to master the tension—your fingers will cramp, your eyes will strain from counting loops."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the prayers you say for fishermen while working. Respect means honoring your losses."
Over the next three months, the team immersed themselves in island life. They helped build a stone wool shed with a sloped roof to shed rain, their hands raw from lifting rocks, and waded through tidal pools with Brigid to collect bladderwrack and kelp for dye. They joined the women in the cottage, knitting by firelight until their fingers were numb, as they sang sean-nós songs about love and loss at sea. "Each stitch must be tight enough to keep out wind," Brigid said, showing Su Yao how to hold the needles. "Too loose, and the cold creeps in; too tight, and the wool breaks. Like a fisherman's grip on the oar—firm but not rigid."
They learned to dye wool in iron pots over peat fires, their clothes stained green and purple as Saoirse taught them to add seawater to the bladderwrack dye to "make the color last like barnacles." "You have to harvest seaweed at low tide when the moon is full," she said, crushing the fronds in a wooden mortar. "It holds the sea's memory—rush it, and you get only gray." They practiced the cable stitch that makes Aran sweaters iconic, their progress slow but steady as Brigid's 86-year-old mother, Moira, who remembered the Great Famine, corrected their loops with a sharp tongue. "The cables must twist like a fisherman's rope," she said, her gnarled fingers untangling a mistake. "A loose twist means a lost net."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and lanolin, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of beeswax and lanolin rendered from the wool, a mixture islanders use to waterproof boots. The wax sealed the metal, preventing stickiness, while the lanolin let it bond with the wool—a combination Seamus declared "smells like the shore at dawn." "It's like giving the thread an island soul," she said, showing Brigid a swatch where the cables now shimmered with subtle metallic highlights.
Fiona, inspired by the way the Aran Islands' currents connect to the North Atlantic, designed a new pattern called "Tides of Two Worlds," merging cable motifs with wave patterns in seaweed-metal thread. The cables gradually transform into waves, symbolizing the islands' relationship with the open ocean. "It honors your fishermen and our sailors," she said, and Seamus nodded, running his hand over the design as if testing its warmth. "The best sailors respect both the island coves and the deep sea," he said. "This sweater understands that."
As the spring sun warmed the islands and the new wool shed stood firm against the wind, the community held a celebration to mark the first Oyster Festival since the storm. With musicians playing fiddles and dancers stepping to jigs, they unveiled their first collaborative Aran sweater. It featured the "Tides of Two Worlds" pattern, its wool fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that caught the light like sunlight on waves, and traditional honeycomb borders that glowed against the gray wool.
Brigid pulled the sweater over Su Yao's head, adjusting the collar to block the wind. "This jumper has two hearts," she said, as the islanders cheered. "One from our Aran Islands, one from your sea. But both beat with the same rhythm."
As the team's boat pulled away from the harbor, Saoirse stood on the pier, waving a small package. Su Yao caught it as the wind lifted it into the air: a scrap of wool dyed green with bladderwrack, stitched with a tiny cable and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in a dried kelp leaf. "To remember us by," read a note in Gaelic and English. "Remember that islands and sea are family—like your thread and our wool."
Su Yao clutched the package as the Aran Islands faded into the mist, their cliffs standing sentinel against the Atlantic. She thought of the hours spent knitting by peat fire, the sean-nós songs that seemed to carry the voices of generations, the way the metal thread had finally learned to dance with the wool. The Gaelic islanders had taught her that tradition isn't about resisting change—it's about carrying the sea's wisdom forward, letting old patterns evolve while keeping the island's spirit intact.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Quechua team: photos of Aymara holding their collaborative poncho at a mountain festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new cable—Aran Islands and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, a fisherman's horn echoed across the water, a call that sounded like both farewell and promise. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless coasts to honor, countless stories to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility—listening to the sea, honoring those who live by its rhythms—the tapestry would only grow more resilient, a testament to the beauty of human connection forged against the wind and waves.