My good friend and hairstylist Joh told me a few months ago that Legwarmers Were Back. I had a wobbly moment of 80s memories and told her that I didn’t think it was a good idea to wear any fashion twice, so I wouldn’t be hopping on that particular bandwagon.

But Joh was very persuasive and she’s a great chum who makes me look like a natural blonde (ahem) so while the bleach did its thing, we hopped onto Ravelry and looked at patterns. My thoughts were that if we were going to go 80s, we had to go really 80s, so we found some stripey jobs that could have had a starring role in any teen movie of that time and I told her that I’d make her a pair as long as she filmed herself lip-synching to the theme from the Fame television show and put it on You Tube.

Big mistake - not only is that clearly never going to happen, but I’d opened that sad little part of my brain where the bad old music was, and every time I picked up the needles I found myself humming some toe-tapping tunes from Fame, Footloose and Flashdance (what a feeling, and not a good one).

Mind you, it took me a while to get around to the legwarmers, despite having found the absolutely perfect blend of 80s colours at the Bendigo show this year. Again, if we were doing this we were doing it right, and no 80s garment was complete without a bit of fuchsia. The camera phone doesn’t do these colours justice - they are bright, they are brash, they could well have sung backup vocals for Bananarama.

The leg warmers stayed uncast-on while I struggled with a bit of the Lipstick jumper that I’m starting to loathe and only made it to production once I’d consigned that particular mess to yet another quarantine period in the spare room. They finally made it to the needles just as spring arrived (another example of my poor project management skills, despite what it says on my CV). Even more frustratingly I ran out of the pink wool halfway into the second legwarmer, so when Joh arrived for a visit I only had one to show her. I made her try it on, unblocked and with dangling ends, to make sure I had got the sizing right - hence the interesting choice to accessorise it with leopard print trousers.

Joh said she’d much rather have mismatching legwarmers and gave me permission to finish with green ribbing rather than waiting for the emergency second skein to arrive. I did that, and I have to say it was a fun project and another useful distraction from the jumper of doom. In case I do another pair, I’ve made a few notes:

I cast on 88 stitches and made them about 50cm long. If I had wanted all the ends to match I’d have needed two skeins of the pink yarn but I barely used half a skein of the blue and purple. Next time perhaps I would do each ribbing section in a different colour, just for fun and also to use the wool more evenly.

So the legwarmers are all photographed as the temperature hits more than 30C, and Joh will still have to model them next time she’s over, heatstroke or no heatstroke. And now, everybody cut loose. Footloose!