Overview: After making the Blue Spruce Aran, I decided to make a simpler drop-shoulder bottom-up Aran, but after Blue Spruce it seemed almost too simple! lol The B&L yellow yarn with red fibers running thru it reminded me of Peach Glow, a color that was in the Brunswick palette.

Cables & Stitch Patterns: Looking thru the new and expanded version of Alice Starmore’s Aran Knitting, I fell in love with the primary cables in Irish Moss (pages 134 thru 139), although I was not all that jazzed about the rest of the cables.

To go with the primary Irish Moss cable, I chose the Branch cable out of Barbara Walker’s first treasury and mirrored it as right-leaning and left-leaning for the secondary, and a 2-st wide Wavy cable as the separator. For the filler stitch at the sides and on the sleeves, I used one of Annie Maloney’s original stitch patterns, #4 Moss Ribbing, out of her book The Knitter’s Guide to Stitch Design. Moss Ribbing has channels on the private side of the fabric so it does have some insulating properties.

I admire Alice Starmore’s technique of having the body cables grow out of the ribbing, so I did that myself with the 2-st Wavy cables, the base of the Branch cables, and the bottom of the Irish Moss cable. (I like the effect I got better than Alice’s!)

The only thing I wish I had done differently was to make this as a top-down saddle-shoulder Aran, because the primary cable in the sleeve would have made such a gorgeous saddle!

Oh, and this does have underarm gussets!