I am knitting a jumper for a friend. She had admired one I made for myself and I offered to knit one for her. And I have just noticed that I had made a mistake on the cable on the one I knitted for myself. I had forgotten, so just goes to show that it isn’t that noticeable.
So we ordered some yarn and I made a start. It is a complicated pattern at first but OK once you get beyond the shoulders. It is knitted on circular needles and starting at the neck working downwards, which feels odd because most garments start at the bottom and work upwards.
If you are interested in the pattern it can be found here.
I have my mother to thank for my love of knitting, and due to her help over the years I am able to tackle complicated patterns. Here she is in a photo taken in the 1980s, along with one of me wearing one of my favourite jumpers she knitted for me – a fair isle that I still have but unfortunately no longer fits…. I have put a few pounds on since then!
As I typed the title for this blog I wondered if ‘jumper’ would be OK for the non-British readers, or if I should use ‘sweater’. Thanks to Google, I now know that we call it a jumper because it’s derived from an old French word, “jupe” which was a type of short coat. At some point in time the word in English became “jump” and then eventually “jumper” and became used to describe what we now call a jumper (Sweater).
Elizabeth Jones' Diary 