Recently, I spent a night at Mum’s. Over the night, the outside temperature dropped by whole 10c/18f, so I had to look for some extra clothing in order to be able to get home comfortably. An excavation in a wardrobe yielded a jumper I’d knit around 1991 or 1992 (the buttons are some copper pins with year 1991 on them, hence the estimated timeframe), e.i., before I became a serial cap knitter (refer to a most lovely Contemporary Dictionary of Knitting by klubokispitsi ).
With my today’s taste and skills, the piece seems abominable. Until 1991, Latvia, my country, was annexed by the Soviet Union, and there was hardly anything, which there wasn’t a shortage of: the jumper was knit of harsh wool-and-cotton blend simply because you had what you had (no yarn shops and absolutely no imported yarns).
Also technically, there are countless glitches:
the tension of the stockinette stranded pattern part and the rest in knit & purl stitches was different, so the earlier bulges out as if the jumper were pregnant;
the neck cut is too wide, whereas the cuffs are too tight;
horizontal lines of pecks of purl stitches along the colour change;
and so on, and so forth.
I don’t think I’d ever return to jumpers unless a rabious dog bites me. ;)