First Jumper I ever knit...

....or knitted....as my mum keeps insisting.

I took up this tag from Kate at Knitting and Knotting. Behold: The first jumper I ever knit. It has never been worn! It was WAAAY too big for me and the neck was funny - there was not quite enough yarn for the collar (hence the stripe) . The arms are different sizes. It weighs about two kilos. Hilarious.

The yarn however is (still) utterly divine. It's Australian wool from Willow Creek Yarns. I don't know if they're around anymore. My mum bought me the while lot one year at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. (In the good old days when it was still at Moore Park. ) I was a poor uni student then. It might have been around 1990.

Mum must have really been feeling generous (which I remember with fondness & appreciation to this day) because she even bought me lovely bamboo needles in the two sizes required and the yarn and the pattern all on the same day. Not to mention probably buying me lunch and paying for me to get into the show as well!! Aren't Mums wonderful!!

Can you see the shot on the pattern? It even looks frumpy on the model. But those were the days when I had an aversion to anything slightly fitted. I was at uni and it was Grunge all the way to the pub and back!

After I dutifully knit the thing which was a mission for the new knitter. I knew I would NEVER wear it. My mum thought she might and took it home to put on the buttons but it didn't happen, it's languished in her knitting cupboard for longer than 15 years. Until I asked for it back last week.

It looks kinda cute on Gemma tho. I'm going to frog it and make a suite of arans for the little girls I think. It's such lovely yarn.

It's funny to see how uneven my tension is and how SIMPLE the pattern is and to remember how scared I was about knitting it. I didn't knit anything seriously after that until more than five years later when I had babes to knit for. Still what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.