Lund

Ages ago, when I was utterly gripped by the fabulous first series of Danish crime drama The Killing, I desperately wanted my very own Jumper of Wisdom. However, I didn’t want to make an exact replica, more of an ‘inspired by’ version of my own; a sheepy, fairisle jumper in which I could to fight crime, solve puzzles and run through badly lit basements, car parks and storage lockers.

I ordered lots of wool from Jamiesons, set about swatching, came up with all sorts of exciting ideas, and even cast on a jumper – which then languished at the bottom of the WIP pile for the better part of a year.

However, a few weeks ago, armed with my new copy of Mary Jane Mucklestone’s brilliant 200 Fair Isle Designs, I started again. This time, I opted for top down, instead of bottom up; I went up a couple of needle sizes for a looser gauge (and up another needle size for the fair isle, to stop my tension getting too tight); and then I winged it.

I cast on, and did the neckline and basic raglan increases like I would for any simple jumper. Then once I split the sleeves, I picked out a pattern from the book and off I went. I didn’t map everything out, I didn’t have much of a plan, I just had fun with it.

I didn’t do any waist shaping, and I just left two stitches at each side plain, so the pattern is broken in half, front and back. With a bit more planning, I could have made it a continuous loop around the body, but I was too impatient.

The main snowflake is centred, but one thing I would change next time is to centre the other two patterns in line with it. Also, I didn’t have enough of the main colour to make it long sleeved. But considering it was a bit of a rush job, I’m really happy with how it turned out. It’s sort of a prototype for my real Jumper of Wisdom, but in the meantime I’d like to think Lund would approve.