In the waiting room at the procrastination clinic

Jumper for newborn Oscar, who is now in his third year

When my friend Jacqui said she was having a baby I started knitting a jumper. I chose the wool carefully – it’s a wool/silk blend which I thought would be soft and non-scratchy on infant skin, in a shade of blue that would do for either sex – and finished most of the body in only a couple of evenings.

Partial garment for an unfeasibly small person

Then I got spooked by having to use double-pointed needles for the sleeves (two sticks good, four sticks bad!) and flung it aside. (In my defence I did make him a cot quilt, which I finished and delivered a couple of weeks before his birth. Go, me!)

I briefly picked the jumper up again when my friend Rhiain became pregnant, but I couldn’t overcome the dpn fear, so instead made (and, yes, finished!) a pretty cot quilt. I felt sure her baby would be a girl.

He wasn’t.

I found that discouraging, so baby Tom never got a present, the girly cot quilt is still pointlessly living with childfree me, and the little blue jumper languishes yet. None of my other friends is, as far as I know, pregnant, but I want this project out of my hair.

Optimistically sized jumper with ill-advised embroidery 

My not-my-real-aunty Barb taught me to knit when I was about seven, but I didn’t take to it. My mother was a good knitter, making garments half from commercial patterns and half out of her head. She knitted constantly for the three of us and for various other relatives and friends, and I wanted to knit too; I tried to like it, but never did. That irked me.

When I was about 28, I determined to give it ‘one last try’ – and I was hooked. For whatever reason, it all came together in my mind and my hands and I was away. My first project was a forest-green crew-neck jumper than I finished in a respectable amount of time and wore for several years. The next project, a cream V-neck jumper, fared less well.

I had to get Mum to help me over the phone with the V neck as I couldn’t work out all the slipping and passing of stitches, but I eventually managed it, and the whole thing was only about an hour away from finished when I abandoned it. All I had to do was sew up the side seams! While I’m sure it wouldn’t have fitted me, I’m not sure that was the reason I gave up on it. I recall thinking I could give it to Mum, always a more modestly sized woman than me.

But what truly baffles me is why I ever decided it would be nice to include some folksy embroidery on it. Perhaps I thought it was 'too plain', a concept I no longer recognise. But wheat ears?!

'Naive' embroidery – so called because it's naive to think it could possibly look good

The mere existence of this jumper goads me, as it reminds me of both my procrastination and my dearth of fashion sense. I’m going to sew it up and give it to charity. There must be someone out there who isn't repulsed by embroidered knitwear.