Teamwork Jumper

As some of you may know (well, some of you definitely DO know), I like to knit. It’s my winter hobby. I usually pick the needles up at around the beginning of September and knit through to Christmas, sometimes a little longer. Although I don’t knit throughout the year otherwise (apart from the odd occasion when the mood strikes me), I do knit a lot while I’m in knitting mode.

One of the things I knitted this year was a Marius jumper for Tiddy, my darling granddaughter. Marius jumpers are traditional Norwegian jumpers. There are lots of traditional patterns but Marius has remained a favourite ever since it was designed back in 1929, with about 5 million copies of the pattern being sold. That’s a lot of jumpers considering there are only around 5 million people in Norway and that many of those patterns will have been used over and over.

Anyway, although both Lise and I are sticklers for tradition, we both think it’s cool when traditional things are given a modern twist. For that reason we decided that Tiddy’s jumper shouldn’t be in the traditional red, white and navy, but in cream, pale green and lilac. They’re colours that we knew would suit Tiddy, whereas we weren’t so sure about the original colours.

I knitted all the pieces but as I was admitted to hospital before I’d manage to ‘steek’ it, I decided to have the pieces sent out to Lise so that she could put it together. Traditional Norwegian jumpers are knitted with the body in one piece, y’see, and need to be machine sewn then clipped up where the arms are to be inserted (ste. Lise had never done that before, so for a few months after receiving the jumper she put off doing the job for fear of ruining the whole thing, but now it’s done and I think Tiddy looks absolutely marvellous in her new Marius jumper.

Tilda in her new Marius jumper

Close up of the Marius pattern

The jumper’s knitted with 100% pure merino wool that I bought whilst visiting Norway last year. It’ll be lovely for her to wear on cooler spring days and chilly evenings.

This year I have to start on an adult sized traditional jumper for LM. I’ve been promising her one for several years now but it’s such a huge job that I keep putting it off - mostly because I have to keep up with my family’s demand for socks, too. I guess they’ll just have to live without new wooly socks if LM’s jumper’s ever to be done, though.

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PS: The photos were 'stolen' from Lise's blog.