That’s straitened without a gh, you note. As in straitened circumstances. In this case, I had five balls of wool from the British Heart Foundation shop (three quid apiece, not bad for pure wool). The Internet could tell me absolutely nothing about it, so that was all I was ever going to have and I didn’t know what would play nicely with it. So I had five balls of wool. And this is what I did with them.
I started with a pattern from Knitting in Vogue, but I hadn’t even got to the end of the ribbing before it became obvious that I wasn’t going to have enough. So I made up my own pattern. I knitted tension squares (I hate knitting tension squares) and looked up cable patterns and did a lot of arithmetic. I started with the front, then did the back, sewed them together, then knitted on the smallest amount of rib that I could get away with, around the arm holes, and then went round and round the bottom edge with more rib until I ran out of yarn.
I’m really pleased with it. It’s the first pattern I’ve designed, it’s a great colour (the photo isn’t quite right; it’s more purple in real life), it gets to my waist (just about – I have a long back); it works. And I did all the ribbing on double-pointed needles because I didn’t have an appropriate cable one and I just wanted to get on with it. That feels quite badass. I only really regretted it a couple of times.
Now I think I want a high-waisted flared skirt in plum needlecord to go with it…
Kathleen Jowitt 