Granny chic or granny-style: more fashion hints from one who knows

I have a tale of woe to tell, a sad story not of granny chic in all its retro stylishness, as epitomized by such icons of chic grannydom as Michelle at The Royal Sisters and Tif at Dottie Angel, but of plain granny.

Sadly, their retro stylishness sets the bar very high, and I, alas and alack, seem to have come crashing down at the first hurdle.

It all started with a cardigan, as most things seem to do in my life, a cardi of the imagination which would be a high point in granny styling.

I searched and found a pattern (Toasty in Rowan's Winter Gifts), and found the most wonderful wool in my secret stash cupboard (which the Head Chef thinks is where I keep my coats).

Duchess in Devonshire, a soft sage green, is one of the Skein Queen's delectable productions: her yarn is the stuff of dreams, and seems drawn towards my cottage by a mysterious process in which, as in a waking trance, I stalk the corridors of her shop in the ether that is the interweb.

I even have a tea dress in peachy-pink coloured silk decorated with little fans (a cast-off from my dear mamma), and I could borrow some green wellies from Princess Bunchy to complete the ensemble ... what more could an ageing mother of three want to complete her life but a fetching little green cardi?

And the buttons: I haven't told you about the buttons. I went a-rummaging in my button box, my inheritance from my own dear departed grandmamma, and found a set of very retro-looking peachy buttons  - genuine vintage, or certainly something very like.

The cardi was nearly a year in the making - things happened, events occurred - I picked it up and put it down, all the while fortified by an image of Pomona transformed into a glamorous granny.

But, woe is me, such a thing was not to be ... the cardi was finished and stitched. I began to feel uneasy.

'It's all in the blocking,' I told myself stoically. 'Just wash it, and it's bound to shape up.'

And lo and behold! Yes, it did shape up: into a cardi for a girl with coathanger shoulders and an ample bosom - just like girls were in the 1940s.

But for me, with inadequate foundations, physically and materially - there is not enough of me, shoulderwise or frontage, to fill the space. In short, the sartorial effect is just plain granny, and chic doesn't get a look-in.

You will see that in spite of Princess B's best efforts at styling and photography, and my efforts at putting my shoulders in various positions, the cardi reverts to type, and reveals that without a puff of something (muscle?) at the top of my arm, there is space to fill. And I did sew it up so carefully ...

So if you choose to knit Toasty, I recommend you go a size down, and possibly buy some shoulder pads.

Me - well, I have been on a régime of only one helping of cake a day, in order that the silk of the tea dress has nothing to cling to, but I can see that I have been taking the wrong tack.

And Princess Bunchy has come up with the solution: she made a very special cake to celebrate Royal Wedding day.

As you see here, it appears quite calorific, and expansive:  I will just have to up my cake ration and hope that rather than settling on the hips, it will come to rest a little higher.

And all is not lost on the green knitting front: I am very pleased with my green stripy socks, which have their own little tale to tell, but that, dear readers, is a story for another day.

Have a good weekend.