18 October 2007

Knit one, purl one

Thursday night and I'm staring out of my window at the glittery lights in Team Valley below. It's bloody freezing, even with double glazing, so I've decided to have a go at knitting a scarf. Well, it's the trendy thing to do at the moment, isn't it? Even if some people take it a little bit too far.

Bear in mind the last time I knitted anything was the middle of the 1980s. Needlework lessons to be precise. My school was quite, well, old-school about the whole gender divide thing - girls did needlework, while the boys did CDT. Bizarrely, we all did technical drawing, and, more sensibly, cookery.

Anyway, it's 1986, or thereabouts, and 2W girls are sat in the middle of a freezing cold portakabin, trying to decide what project to make for the year. I decide to knit a jumper. A classic 1980s batwing jumper.

I remember lots of dropped stitches, several holes, and a lot of time spent unravelling pale blue mohair wool. I spent hours knitting, even in lunch hour (yes, I had no life). The thing took months, but finally, it was finished. I sewed the pieces together, and...

It was massive.

Beyond massive.

Instead of 1980s on-trend batwingdom (probably several years too late - this was deepest East Anglia, after all) I'd created an F14. Tom Cruise could have taken off in the damn thing, holes or no holes.

I wore it twice. It ended up in the cat basket.

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