All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtile, ever-present perils of life.
Melville, Moby-Dick, “The Line”

You can purchase kits of the yarn for this pattern, which was dyed especially for this cardigan, from Dragonfly Fibers here.

The whale-line’s path through the boat is complex and treacherous for the whalers. When a whale has been harpooned, the line zips around them with the potential to sever any limb it entangles. Melville calls it the “magical, sometimes horrible, whale-line.” In this cardigan, I sought to capture the twists of the line in the colors of both hemp and Manilla.