About Us

Somewhere out there, there is a crewneck sweatshirt. Although it is undeniably and unequivocally mine, I haven’t seen it in nearly a decade, and I have only a sneaking suspicion of its general location.

It’s gray with three large, navy-blue letters stitched across the chest: U-S-U.

It was an heirloom, of sorts, having been previously owned by my mom. My younger sister and I both claimed ownership of the sweatshirt, and the dispute worked its way up to the supreme court of our household. Our mom, who had the ultimate authority on the matter, ruled that the sweatshirt would not belong to any one sibling and demanded that her kids get along (I dispute this ruling and find it unconstitutional).

In accordance with the ruling, my sister and I were given split custody of the sweatshirt, which quickly became a turbulent arrangement at best. Sharing was a strategy dead on arrival, and bartering and bribery proved effective only as ways to escalate the situation.

My sister and I spent our entire high school years and then some fighting over this sweatshirt. One of us would fake sick and swipe it from the other’s closet while they were at school. The sweatshirt would get “lost” for long periods of time, only to show up in an Instagram story, reigniting the dormant conflict.

One of us would plan our outfit around it, but stuff it into a backpack and don a decoy sweatshirt to wear out of the house only to change once we got to school – a tactic that didn’t work too well, as we went to the same school. When all else failed and reinforcements became necessary, one of us would wait until family dinner and loudly ask to borrow it. Our parents, hearing a polite and reasonable request, would enforce the transaction.

When I would come home and lock my car in the driveway, it wasn’t to prevent grand theft auto, it was to keep my sister from snatching a sweatshirt hidden under my backseat. Laundry day, when all parties knew the target would be in transit, became war. Espionage, reconnaissance, preventative measures, strike, counter-strike, wash, rinse, repeat. More often than not it would be “eaten by the washer,” or it would disappear from a pile of folded laundry, or it would get pilfered out of the dryer, still damp.

The sweatshirt itself was no stranger to this tug-of-war chess match. It, and the feud we were fighting, was older than both of us. The heirloom was only an heirloom inasmuch as it was passed down from generation to the next. In truth, it was really the spoils of war. 

Like my sister and me, our mom and her brother shared the sweatshirt when they were in high school. The word “share” meant to them the same thing it meant to us, and the two siblings spent years fighting over the expertly crafted cotton. War hadn’t evolved much in the generation between conflicts. They used the same tactics and deployed the same strategies.

I, like my uncle, lost that fight. Although my sister denies possession of it, I expect it to mysteriously turn up one day when she has kids. Then, they will fight over it just like their mom and their grandma did.

As Crofter became a reality, that sweatshirt spent quite a bit of time on my mind, taunting and inspiring me.

My genuine hope is to recreate that magic and spark multigenerational familial conflict – in Cache Valley and beyond – with each meticulously crafted Crofter ware.