Blue fuzzy sweater

My stepMoM and I had a great time looking through her mother's knitting bag. There was some mystery about the blue fuzzy sweater. J did know that it was intended for Grandma T's sister-in-law who was in a nursing home at the end. As it turned out, Grandma T passed away first, never finishing the sweater. J said that was very unlike her mother. She was one to always finish her projects and would encourage J to do likewise.

The sweater had raglan sleeves which were already set into the body of the sweater and the stitches for the collar were on the needles. The knitting stopped in the midst of a row with just a small amount of yarn left.

Why did she stop when she was so close to being done? Was she frustrated that she didn't have enough yarn to finish or the more logical answer, she got sick and never returned to it.

We looked through the pattern books in the bag and found the pattern. It was from "new dreams" by Brunswick, 1968.

Grandma T didn't add buttonholes. She intended the sweater to be slipped on so that her sister-in-law wouldn't have to fuss with buttoning it. The real mystery was that where the band ended, she knit a row of straight stitches to fold over. She continued the band pattern for another width. Was it a collar? My thought is that she wanted to encase a ribbon to tie at the neck.

Here is the pattern with her notations.

With J's encouragement, I finished the row and bound it off. After four decades, it was finally off the needles.

J hopes to have it blocked and give it to her cousin, the daughter of the intended recipient.