Knitted Cardigans

They can be chunky, thin-knit, short like a bolero or shrug, long, with pockets or without, wrap-around, tied in front, with or without buttons, tight/sleek to show off curves, with or without a belt, baggy to slouch in, grandpa style... the varieties are endless.

On a cooling day you can wrap one around your shoulders - not so easy with a sweater.

And you can whip a cardigan off in a trice - whereas a sweater you have to pull over your head and rumple your hair - sexy in the bedroom perhaps but not such fun on the London tube or New York subway, where you're liable to twang an earring into the next carriage or ding the woman's bosom next to you with your elbow. And then you sit with a broken bracelet hanging over your ear and your blouse displaying one boob.

And hey - pullovers don't generally look so good with a cute necklace, beads or a chain!

For me the softest knits against my skin are cashmere and angora. Heaven. And there are lovely soft synthetic mixes and imitations too. The softest can-hardly-feel-it's-there ones I like to wear around the house or tucked up in bed once they're past their oh-glory-aren't-I-a lovely-cardi stage. I (sob) had to throw out my darling pale grey one last year only because the holes had got so many and so large that I couldn't tell where my arms should go.

For warmth I like to slip into angora (made from the voluminous hair of the angora rabbit - they look like big furry pompoms), or mohair (made from the angora goat - which look like sheep) or a thick chunky aran knit, which traps warm air within its chunky bits. I have an ultra double chunky number which keeps me as warm outside as a coat on the coldest day - as long as it doesn't rain lol.

Film stars of the 1940s and 50s knew how to wear cardis so that they enhanced their sexiness, and sometimes wore a tight little number back-to-front.

And Marilyn Monroe was photographed in a hand knitted chunky one (and possibly nothing else) in her last photo-shoot on the Santa Monica beach, by George Barris in 1962. Her cardi was auctioned for $167,500 in 1999 and its expected auction price had been a mere $30-50,000. It's currently on display in the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum at London's Piccadilly Circus.

November
It's a coldish November day in England as I write this page, so am sitting here in my mother's creamy aran, still, I like to think, with my mother's soothing smells wrapped around me.

December
It's now a cold early winter here in England, and the storage heater in my living room has broken down. I'm typing this wearing three - yes, three - cardigans (and one of them is my mama's. Of course). How could I live without them...