JUMPERS and Jazz in July is nearly upon us. The Warwick CBD is going to come alive with colour, inventiveness, yarn, fibre and all manner of accessories to give the bare trees their 'winter coats'. Thousands of visitors come specially to experience Warwick's creative flair.

This year's theme is "Dulcet'.

For some, that might pose a bit of a challenge. How do you make 'sweet and lovely' for a tree?

As soon as I read the theme would be Dulcet, I smiled. Dulcet is perfect, I thought. I would make a tree jumper to depict a novel. This world of ours is full of books, and a lot of good reads. One such read is a book called Local Time. It has a delightful mix of fun characters, some of which the reader can easily imagine soft dulcet tones in their dialogue.

I started to visualise the characters and scenes from the book. Ideas started to bombard my head, I quickly wrote, sketched, and pulled difference faces as I planned the jumper in my head, and what would go where.

It was all a bit haphazard to start with, which was a good fit for the book as well. Local Time is about aging outrageously and disgracefully, and is loaded with chaos and mayhem, so haphazard was a good way to move forward with my jumper.

The time marched on, the weeks were flying by. I made a tree jumper, two years previously, and covered it in crochet. It was a 1-hook job, and a lot of work. This year would be different.

Once I had the required length of material, it became a daily feature on the floor as I designed, cut and fixed the felt shapes into place. The local haberdashery was my saving grace with their range of colourful felt pieces.

As the shapes, colours and story unfolded, my grin broadened. This jumper will be seen in the morning fog!

To complement my tree jumper, I had crocheted a jacket to wear. I thanked my lucky stars I didn't need of any more yarn as I'd seen trolleys loaded with yarn of varying size and colours go through the checkout by the knitting and crochet community. My only need was a few buttons to finish my jacket, from the ever helpful habby ladies.

My jumper is now ready for tree # 73, and a festival filled with colour, music and smiles.

Fleur Lind