purple – Kathleen Jowitt

A bright purple knitted sleeveless top with a cable pattern

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…

Sliced carrots, which instead of being the usual orange are a deep purple colour. Some have a lighter ring around the core

We got purple carrots in the veg box this week. If I told you I’d been saving them for Advent I’d be lying: in fact I fancied leek and potato soup on Monday, had a really busy day on Wednesday so just defrosted some tomato sauce and cooked some pasta, thought the broccoli was probably more urgent on Friday, and didn’t cook on the other days. So in fact it’s worked out very appropriately with these magnificent carrots arrayed in deep purple for the solemn season of Advent. Some of them even have stars in the middle, as you see, although these didn’t look as striking after cooking.

It’s St Andrew’s day as well, of course. I did think about that (very slightly) in advance, and cooked a bought salmon en croûte in his honour, and thought of my last church, dedicated, like many others in Cambridge, to the first fisherman-apostle. But it’s been a wearing day at the end of a wearing month, and I don’t quite feel as if I’ve properly got started on Advent yet, or given St Andrew the attention he deserves. Plenty more of Advent to come, of course. St Andrew might have to wait for next year.