I would have absolutely killed for this cardigan in the early 70s: it would have gone so brilliantly with my cotton loons, cheesecloth blouse and thong sandals as I wafted down the High Street in a fug of patchouli and marijuana. Over 40 years later, I still might feel the need to drag this off someone else’s back and run… but I don’t have to as it’s mine!

Yarn: it would have been nice to have bought a kit, but I had so many oddments of lovely yarn to use up. The most predominant yarns are the Eden Cottage ones listed above (the MC is Bowland), but I’ve used oddments left from just about every DK project I’ve knitted over recent years. I’ve picked the colours to try to emulate the Earth and Sky colourway listed in the pattern, although I didn’t have quite as many different shades (I used about 13, rather than 16, I think). Many are hand-dyed yarns, so the overall effect is quite muted and soft.

Pattern: wonderfully written and precisely explained: I could wax lyrical for hours about it. The tips on colour changing are great: I’ve mainly used splicing, which has worked perfectly with the different wools and alpacas. No mods, but I added an extra row on the top part of the left front so that I didn’t need to splice at the end of the 1st row of a stripe (the right front worked OK). I also didn’t splice when I was knitting the short rows (for which I used the German short row method), as my splices looked a bit lumpy. Anyway, in the end I had hardly any ends to sew in, which is mind-blowing with a knit with as many colour-changes as this. I will say that the sleeves were a pain to do: stopping and splicing every 2 rows was hard work, but it was helped along by watching Djokovic beat Federer! And I chose a smallish size: I wanted the cardigan to be quite fitted, rather than enveloping - more like a little short jacket.

Overall, a really wonderful knit that I’ll wear with pride, man.

eta, couple of days later: a few more photos taken at the (very windy) Yorkshire coast. The sea was so beautiful at Flamborough, I would have gone in if I’d had my cossie with me. And the last photo is me in about 1971!