Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 124
The Atlantic wind howled around the Aran Islands, where stone walls crisscrossed green fields and thatched cottages huddled against the spray. In a cottage with a peat fire crackling in the hearth, a group of knitters sat on wooden chairs, their needles clicking like rain on slate as they worked thick wool into cabled patterns that mirrored the waves.
Their leader, 68-year-old Maureen O'Connor, looked up from her work, her hands gnarled from decades of knitting and her face flushed from the fire. She held up a sleeve of an Aran sweater—its surface a labyrinth of cables, diamonds, and moss stitches in creamy wool, each pattern a code for the island's history. "This is our seanchas (lore)," she said in Gaelic, her voice like the creak of an old boat. "It carries the names of our fishermen, the rhythm of the tides, the strength of our cliffs."
Aran knitting, a craft born of necessity in the harsh island climate, is a tapestry of survival. The wool comes from Galway sheep, hardy creatures that graze on seaweed and salt grass, their fleece naturally water-resistant. It's spun by hand in cottages, the spinners singing * sean-nós * (old-style) songs to keep the thread even. "We card the wool with seaweed ash to make it soft," Maureen's granddaughter, 26-year-old Siobhán, explained, showing a basket of fleece. "My daideo (grandfather) said the ash makes the wool remember the sea—too little, and it shrinks; too much, and it frays. It's like taming the waves: respect their power."
The patterns, developed by fishermen's wives to identify bodies lost at sea, tell stories without words: cables for ropes and nets, diamonds for wealth (from kelp harvesting), and moss stitches for the island's hardy vegetation. "That cable with three twists? It's the Claddagh knot, for love of home," Siobhán said, pointing to a pattern. "We knit it so our men never forget where to return."
Su Yao's team arrived after their Beijing exhibition, drawn to the Aran sweater's rustic elegance and its narrative depth. They brought samples of seaweed-metal threads blended with wool, hoping to create a fabric that retained the sweater's warmth while adding durability against the salt wind. But when Lin displayed a machine-knit sample with printed patterns, Maureen's brother, 72-year-old Pádraig—a retired fisherman with a beard like driftwood—slammed his fist on the table. "Your machine knits without croí (heart)," he said, tossing the sweater into a pile of peat. "Our Arans are made with the tears of women waiting, the prayers of mothers, the salt of the sea. This thing is plastic—it would drown in a squall."
Tensions erupted when a winter storm battered the islands, smashing fishing boats against the rocks and flooding the wool storage sheds. The spinners' looms, set near the shore, were swept away, and their stored fleece, soaked in saltwater, turned stiff as cardboard. "The sea rejects your metal thread," Pádraig muttered as men repaired nets, their hands raw from rope burn. With Imbolc (spring festival) approaching, when new sweaters are given to protect against the last cold snaps, the community faced disaster. "Without warm Arans, our children will shiver through March," Maureen said, staring at the ruined wool.
That night, Su Yao sat with Maureen in her cottage, where a pot of coddle (sausage stew) simmered and a shelf held framed photos of fishermen in Aran sweaters. The walls were hung with sweaters passed down through families, each one marked with the knitter's initials and the year. A small shrine to St. Brigid, patron of knitters, held a wooden cross and a ball of yarn. "I know these sweaters aren't just clothes," Su Yao said, sipping whiskey to ward off the cold. "They're your identity, your lifeline, your story. We want to help them endure."
Maureen smiled, offering her a barmbrack (fruit cake) with a ring hidden inside. "My máthair (mother) used to say that even a frayed Aran can be mended with patience," she said. "But your metal—maybe it's a sign. Young ones buy cheap jumpers now, not hand-knit Arans. They don't know the patterns or the songs. We need to show them our seanchas still has power."
Over the next three weeks, the team worked alongside the knitters. They helped rebuild the wool sheds with stone and thatch, their hands blistered from lifting slates, and joined Pádraig in gathering seaweed for carding, learning to read the tides as he did—"An mhara aithneann a chuid (The sea knows its own)." They spun wool by the peat fire, their fingers sticky with lanolin, while Maureen taught them sean-nós songs. "Sing like the wind," she said, demonstrating the knitting rhythm. "Strong, but with feeling—so the threads hold when the storm comes."
Lin experimented with coating the seaweed-metal threads in beeswax and linseed oil, a mixture islanders use to waterproof boats. "It needs to breathe like wool," she said, showing Maureen a swatch where the metal threads added subtle strength without making the fabric rigid. Maureen pulled it tight, then nodded: "This would keep a fisherman warm in a gale."
Fiona collaborated with Siobhán to design a new pattern: cables that merged into Chinese lantern motifs, with metal threads outlining the lanterns to catch the light like stars over water. "It honors your sea and our festivals," Fiona explained, and Pádraig traced the pattern with a calloused finger, his eyes softening. "The Celts and the Chinese both tell stories in knots," he said. "This Aran remembers that."
On Imbolc, the knitters gathered in the village hall, where their collaborative sweater was laid out on a table draped with linen. The wool glowed in the firelight: cables in cream wool, twisting into lanterns woven with metal threads that shimmered like moonlight on waves. Maureen draped a sleeve over Su Yao's shoulders—a cable and a lantern, stitched together. "Now you're cairde na h-oidhche (friend of the night)," she said.
As the team's boat pulled away, they could hear fiddle music and singing drifting across the water. Through the mist, Siobhán was teaching children to cast on stitches, the seaweed-metal thread spooled beside her. Su Yao thought of the new lambs, gamboling on the cliffs, and the way the metal threads had learned to strengthen the Aran without overshadowing its soul—how innovation, when rooted in respect for a people's struggle against the elements, becomes part of their survival.
Her phone buzzed with a message from Beijing: their fusion costumes had been commissioned for an international tour. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added new knots in Ireland—your turn to weave something that bridges east and west."
Somewhere in the distance, the fiddle music merged with the crash of waves on the Aran cliffs, a harmony as old as the islands and as endless as the horizon.