This simple, instant-gratification jumper is an interpretation of a “lost” type of nineteenth-century knitting. This Popped Un is a great way to work a fast knit that will teach you all the techniques you need for a gansey, like underarm gussets, knitting in the round, seam stitches, and working sleeves from the top down. But it is way faster than knitting a traditional gansey, or one of the “plain-vanilla” gansey recipes often found in books – they may indeed be simple, but are worked at knitted gansey gauge, so they can become rather boring, with no motifs or patterns to encourage you onwards.

These simple jumpers with bands of red or blue worked on a natural-colored background, were a common sight in the Dales. Yet there were no known extant examples of “Popped Uns,” despite their being knitted in their thousands, for decades.

As I was researching for Cooperative Press’s new edition of the classic Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales, I stumbled on an 1843 photograph in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland, by the famous Edinburgh photographers, Hill and Adamson. I think this may be the only sighting of a Popped Un in the wild.