A letter from a reader

At 68, buttons and I have parted ways

I never thought I would be writing about knitwear. I am 68, my hands smell of tomato plants most days, and my idea of a review is telling Sylvia something is decent. But three women asked me about this cardigan at the garden centre café on Saturday, and I would rather write it down once than give the speech again.

First, the confession. Buttons and I have parted ways. It was not my idea. My thumbs decided it a couple of winters back, and anyone with a stiff joint or two knows exactly the morning I mean. Cold kitchen, six small cardigan buttons, and by the fourth one you are speaking to a piece of knitwear in language your mother would not approve of.

So I did what a practical woman does. I stopped buying cardigans with buttons. And that is where the trouble started, because do you know what they sell you instead?

Pretty cardigans with fiddly buttons, or easy zips on things that look like you are off to walk a dog in the rain. Pick one.

Anoraks. Fleeces. Things with drawstrings. Nobody, it seemed, would put a decent zip on a cardigan that still looked like a cardigan. I do not blame any woman who gave up and kept fumbling. I nearly did.

Then I saw one on Brenda at the garden centre

Brenda from my allotment row turned up by the seed potatoes in a soft burgundy cardigan, worked in a little open lattice, like something somebody clever had made by hand. It looked hand-knitted and it looked warm without being heavy, and when she reached the till she did not fumble with a single button, because there were none. One zip, one pull, done.

It is called the Constance, from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise, but the summer sale was on, and I ordered the burgundy that evening, fully expecting to find the catch.

I have not found the catch.

What happened at the café

I wore it to the garden centre over a plain top, zip pulled to where I wanted it and not an inch further, which is another thing buttons never gave you.

Three different women asked me about it before the tea went cold. And Sylvia looked at it, then at me, and asked where it was from before she had even sat down. From Sylvia, that is practically a medal.

Since then it has done the allotment in the early morning, the supermarket, and two evenings on the step when the warmth went out of the day. The lattice lets the air through, so you are covered without being cooked, which is precisely what a summer cardigan is for and precisely what most of them get wrong.

Three things worth knowing

One. The zip is the whole point. One pull with a full fist, no pinching, no fumbling, and it stops wherever you want it. If your fingers have opinions in the morning, this is the difference between wearing a cardigan and carrying one.

Two. The knit does the talking. The open lattice looks hand-made and expensive, so nobody clocks the zip at all. It reads as a proper cardigan, not sportswear, and the collar sits neatly instead of flopping about.

Three. There is one for everyone. Six colours, from a soft beige to this burgundy, in sizes 6/8 up to 18/20, the same relaxed easy fit throughout. It goes over everything I own, which is mostly plain, and improves all of it.

About the price

I will be plain about this bit, because the price is what made me suspicious.

It is £32.95. It was £66.00.

Half price is usually where I start asking what is wrong with it. I have found nothing wrong with it. It is a small boutique selling direct, no department store taking its slice in the middle, and a summer sale on to shift the season’s stock. That is the whole mystery.

And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots, so I read on. One woman had written, “The zip is the whole reason I bought it and the knit is the reason I bought a second one. I have had so many comments.” That settled it.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

If you were stood at my kitchen table with a brew and you asked me straight, this is what I would say.

If cardigan buttons have started winning the argument in the mornings, do not let them push you into an anorak. There is a middle road now, and it is knitted in a nice lattice and costs less than a decent roast.

The sale is on and the nice colours go first. Once the summer stock has gone it is gone until next year. Stop dithering and go and look.

Buttons and I are not getting back together. I am at peace with it.

Pat