Poor Matt, he really deserves a better friend. Having promised him a jumper for his last birthday, I ran out of time and ended up giving him a gift bag containing 6 skeins of yarn and a card that read, “I’ll need this back for some finishing touches”. Well, honestly, his birthday is in November and it’s far too warm in Sydney for a jumper. Let’s go with that.

I chose the Huddle pattern in a burst of optimism and immediately ran into a snag – it’s written for 10ply yarn and I didn’t find anything in that weight that I liked. Instead, I fell in love with this Tarndie Polwarth at the Bendigo show last year and decided to use it, despite it being 8ply. Seriously, this stuff is just gorgeous – it knits up like a warm, soft cloud and it feels as lush as cashmere. The colour is stunning, too, just enough variation to make the fabric have some depth and texture, but not enough that you have to worry about colour changes when you start a new skein.

So I breezily decided to just knit a larger size, then obsessively measured Matt’s favourite garments to work out what dimensions to aim for. I told him that there would be no guarantee that the finished jumper would resemble these measurements in any way and he promised to be fine with it. He’s great, isn’t he?

My next modifications were to the hem and the sleeves. I’m normally a fan of garter stitch but for some reason I didn’t like it here. As part of the world’s largest tension square I knitted up a sampler with some other options for edgings, consulted my client, and agreed on a single broken rib stitch as a replacement.

Reading through the pattern I was a bit concerned about the collar, which appeared sort of scrappy even in the “official” photos. My knitting generally looks a lot rougher than the pattern images, so I started to worry that this might not work. Eventually I did my best Scarlett O’Hara, decided that tomorrow was another day, and left the neck till last.

The pattern is flagged as one for beginners but I’m not sure that I would agree. I thought there were a few intuitive leaps required, which I sorted out as I went along but which wouldn’t have been clear had I been knitting this a few years ago. It’s a nice concept, though, and a great basic shape that I’m going to knit again and use to play with colourwork (eek!) or stitch patterns.

The poor jumper got parked a few times during its construction while I got cracking on finishing some other deadline projects, but with winter coming along I dragged it out of the project bag in the hope of giving it to the birthday boy while he could still wear it. I had to make a few changes to the sleeves to shorten them, due to knitting the larger size, so I decreased more rapidly than the pattern suggested, which seems to work out more or less okay. Eventually I had to face up to the Time for the Collar and it was just as gruesome as I had feared. I don’t know what was going on but the stitches were loose and horrible and it was shapeless and holey and generally depressing.

Using my traditional coping mechanisms, I poured a very large glass of wine and gave vent to some unladylike language. Feeling better, I went to Ravelry to hunt for alternate patterns for shawl-collared jumpers and I can now proudly say that I am the curator of quite an impressive collection. The one that made the most sense was the Pickles version so I had a go at adapting that.

I ended up picking up stitches all around the neckline, except for the centre front ones, and knitting away on those. I put in a few short rows to help it to fold over more easily and stopped when it was as wide as the stitches at the centre front. I cast off the collar stitches, picked up the centre front ones and cast them off, then sewed the collar edges to the front. It doesn’t look brilliant but it’s much neater than the first version and I’m calling that a win. Well, it was an excuse for another glass of wine, anyway ….

Matt finally got his birthday present, only seven months late. He is really happy with it and even did his best “knitting pattern model” pose for me, bless his heart. Probably best that he sticks with the job in IT, though, don’t we think?