Neha and I came to Ireland for our first anniversary. We loved the natural scenery, the historic ruins, the adventurous activities, the cozy pub culture, and the hearty food. But besides all of that, we loved shopping for sweaters in all the towns we visited!
We started in Dublin, where we checked out a few small chain stores in the city. For 50-60 euros, we found tons of basic Aran sweaters in 100% wool and in beautiful colors. These were already quite nice, and they set the bar high for the rest of the trip! We planned to hold off on making any decisions until we visited more smaller towns, especially since we’d be passing back through Dublin on our way out at the end of the trip.
As we got a better sense of pricing, we found things fell roughly in the following buckets:
- 50-100 euros: basic machine knit Aran sweaters in merino wool with higher prices for thicker material or slightly non-standard weaving patterns
- 100-150 euros: still machine knit and merino wool, but more unusual patterns and shapes such as patchwork color/weaving pattern or cardigans
- 150-200 euros: handknit, but still merino and not necessarily handknit in the country
A surprising number of sweaters were either explictly marked as merino wool or not marked, but felt soft enough that it was likely that they were. While in the US, merino is considered a premium material for its softness, here it seemed like the default. I actually was hoping to find something from local wool both for authenticity and for increased ruggedness.
Our next town we visited was Killarney. We visited several larger shops here including the well known Aran Sweater Market and the also very large Quills. The former mostly had the same types of things we saw in Dublin, but a larger variety of sizes, colors, and weaving patterns. In Quills I came across my first handknit sweaters that were knit in Ireland from Irish wool, these from a company called Athena designs. They were plenty rugged, in fact, perhaps a bit too stiff and rough for my tastes. I was very tempted as I loved the deep blue-green color, but decided to hold off for now. These were closer to 300 euros, which made sense in the context of the other prices.
Our final town was Doolin. This town was tiny, and while we did check out a sweater store here, the more exciting shops would be on the nearby Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands, and where the Aran weaving patterns were invented. Here, we started with the original location of Aran Sweater Market, though this had similar things to the other location.
We biked along the island seeing sights until we reached the Kilmurvey Craft Village. Here there were several sweater stores! Some seemed to mostly have the same collection of machine knit brands as elsewhere, but there were 2 that were famous for handknits done on the island itself. The first one I went into was An Púcán.
This store was tiny, with maybe a dozen total sweaters present. Even the single staff member was actively knitting one. She mentioned that they had a group of 3 ladies who knit all the sweaters in the store. Given the minimal supply, I wasn’t actually sure I’d find anything, but after looking through everything, we found a single sweater in my size and in a natural off-white. While I was originally hoping for something with more color, the knit quality was impeccable. It was Irish lambswool, making it soft and still rugged. The actual knots had just the right level of tension for the sweater to be lightweight and warm and have a slight stretch to settle nicely on my torso. It was 330 euros, so I decided I should check out the other store just in case, but this was probably the best knit sweater I had ever seen in my life.
At An Tuirne, there were more colors of sweaters, but they were pretty light and pastel in a way that didn’t appeal to me as much as the deeper jewel tones of the cheaper sweaters we had seen before. Somewhat more surprisingly, they didn’t fit me right at all, and felt quite uneven, and also were near 500 euros each. This showed me how much the individual fit of handknit sweaters could vary and was enough to convince me to get the one from An Púcán. Neha and I still ended up getting machine knit sweaters from An Tuirne which were cheaper and had nice designs (her) and color (me). We also picked out a couple more machine knit sweaters at the Aran Sweater Market to take back as gifts.
The handknit sweater was the perfect culmination of shopping through 3 towns and around a dozen different stores!