A letter from a reader

At 68, I used to knit better jumpers than I could buy, and I had stopped bothering with either

For about twenty years the only thing I wrote down with any regularity was row counts, in pencil, down the margin of a knitting pattern, and half of those were crossings-out. I am not a writer, and it has never once been my place to tell another woman what she ought to put on.

But three women asked me about my jumper at the travel agent's on Thursday morning, one of them before I had my coat off, and I have explained it over the garden wall enough times since that it seemed easier to write it down once.

It started at the end of September. My sister June was clearing out our mother's old sideboard, and she came round with a shoebox of photographs and put one down in front of me on the kitchen table. Me at Bridlington, about thirty, in a striped jumper I had knitted myself, three colours, every join done properly. Then she looked at what I had on, which was a plain navy thing from the supermarket with a bobble on one elbow, and she said it.

You used to knit better than you shop, Pat.

I laughed, because she was right and because she always is. Then I went upstairs and had a look in the jumper drawer. Seven jumpers. Navy, navy, a brown, a grey, a black for funerals, a cream one gone yellow under the arms, and the navy I had on. One flat colour each. Not one of them chosen. Every one of them grabbed off a rail in a hurry because it was cold and it was there.

I want to be fair to myself here, and to you if your drawer looks like mine. Nobody decides to stop caring what they put on. It goes one hurried jumper at a time.

How it happens

I knitted every jumper my children wore until they were old enough to be embarrassed by them, and most of them had stripes. Blocks of colour, a neat stitch along every join, the sort of thing you could turn inside out and not be ashamed of.

Then the children grew up, my hands got slower, and the knitting bag went in the cupboard under the stairs. Fair enough. That is life.

What I had not reckoned on was what I would end up buying instead. Go into any shop in town and look at the jumpers they think a woman of my age is after. One flat colour, so thin you can read through it, or else covered in reindeer and sequins as though we have all given up and joined a panto.

So you buy the navy because it is the least bad. You wear it to everything. Nobody says a word, and after a while you stop expecting them to.

What I had wrong

June thought I needed something bright. She has been telling me to wear yellow since about the time I stopped dyeing my hair.

So I tried. I put on a mustard jumper in a shop in town and looked like a road sign. It went straight back on the hanger.

It turns out the colour was never the problem.

The problem was that a flat colour has nothing in it to look at. No shape, no finish, nothing anybody took any care over. The jumpers I used to knit were not loud. They were grey and cream and brown, most of them. What made them work was that the colours were put together properly and every join was finished by hand.

A grey jumper with some thought in it reads completely differently from a grey jumper with none. It took me until 68, and an old photograph in a shoebox, to work that out.

The jumper is called the Megan

I did the looking myself this time, which June finds very annoying.

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. The jumper is called the Megan. I was not going from navy to a road sign in one jump, so I ordered the grey. Four soft bands, mid grey across the shoulders, then cream, then a dark charcoal, then mid grey again down to the hem. A plain crew neck, full sleeves gathered into ribbed cuffs, and a little white cross-stitch running along the joins.

It is soft, and it is cosy without being bulky, so it goes under my coat without a fight. The fit is relaxed through the middle and it sits at the hip, so it is not forever being pulled down. It is warm enough for a cold bus shelter and not so heavy that you are cooking by the time you get inside. And it is easy to look after, which at my age is a feature, not a footnote.

The cross-stitch is what got me. It is only a little line of white along the joins, but it is the finish I would have put on myself, and the sort my mother would have nodded at. It makes it look like somebody took care over it, which is precisely what my drawer had been missing.

What happened at the travel agent's

June and I go to a Christmas market every December on the coach, and every year I book it at the little travel agent's on our parade of shops, because I like to hand the money over to a person. Thursday morning, drizzle, three chairs by the window and a radiator going full pelt.

The woman waiting in the chair next to mine asked where it was from before I had my coat off. The young lad at the second desk asked while his computer was thinking about it. And Freda, who has booked every holiday Brian and I have had for twenty-odd years and has never once remarked on anything but the price of travel insurance, looked up over her glasses, looked me up and down, and said I looked like I had already been somewhere nice.

From Freda, that is an upgrade.

What I noticed more than the asking, though, was that I did not think about it. I sat in that window with my coat over the back of the chair for the best part of forty minutes while Freda found us two seats near the front, and I did not once feel like I was sat there in something I had grabbed off a rail. I forgot I had it on until somebody mentioned it.

On Sunday I put it straight back on to take Wilf round the park, over my old trousers, and felt like myself in it. Brian said it looked like one of mine. I have decided to take that as the compliment he intended.

Three things worth knowing

One. The sizing stops at an 18. It goes from a UK 8 to a UK 18, and I will say that plainly, because I know some of you will want to know before you go and look. I am a 16 and it sits as it should, with room to move.

Two. It goes with what you already have. Jeans for the shops, my good trousers for Sunday lunch, a plain skirt if you are that way inclined. The bands do the work, so everything else can stay quiet.

Three. Grey is a perfectly good place to start. It comes in blue, red, yellow and purple as well, if you want them. But if you are a navy and grey woman like me, the grey one is the gentle way in. It is still grey. It just has something to say for itself.

About the price

I will be straight with you, because the price is what made me suspicious.

The Megan is £28.95. It was £58.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that in town for a flat navy jumper that had bobbled by the second wash.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, with no department store in the middle taking its cut, and they have a sale on to move the autumn stock while the weather turns.

I do not trust perfect scores, so I went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Mixed enough to sound like real people, so I read on. A woman from Haslingden had written that she bought the grey to wear to her grandson's school concert and has worn it every weekend since. That sounded about right to me.

Then I ordered the blue as well. For the coach.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

If you were stood at my kitchen table with a cup of tea, and June had gone home with her shoebox, this is what I would tell you.

If you have a drawer full of flat colours you bought in a hurry, and you put one on every morning without looking, it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and have a look.

Not because a jumper is going to change your life. It will not. But there is something in pulling a jumper over your head in the morning and liking what you see that I had let go of without noticing, and I would rather you did not let go of it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first, which June found out when the 12/14 in red had gone by the time she made her mind up. And the first autumn stock never hangs about once the cold weather arrives.

The photograph from Bridlington is on the fridge now. June says it is there to keep me honest.

Pat