By Sarah Schwager
Knit is fit for a prince
OFFICER’S Marianne Kamperman will fly to Denmark next year after beating 500 others in a Women’s Weekly competition to make an item of clothing for the newborn prince of Denmark.
Mrs Kamperman and her husband Theo will tour Denmark, Sweden and Norway on a 15-day all expenses paid trip after the winning jumper was announced in the magazine last week.
The jumper is red and white to represent Danish colours and is embroidered with the word ‘Tassie’, and pictures of a Tasmanian devil and an apple.
Mrs Kamperman said a neighbour had told her about the competition and suggested she enter.
“I love knitting. I have always been knitting,” she said.
“You feel good about yourself for winning something like this even without the prize.”
The design will be patented to Women’s Weekly while all other garments entered in the competition will go to charity.
Mrs Kamperman and six runners-up also won two Skagen watches and a set of eight Hans Christian Andersen books worth a total value of $460.
“I never thought I’d win it. I thought they’d pick something else,” she said.
“They needed the pattern as well. Not everyone can write the pattern.”
Mrs Kamperman said the trip would be taken in May, as that was the first the travel company, Trafalgar, offered to combat the icy winter.
Mrs Kamperman, who is originally from Berlin, and her husband, who is from Amsterdam, were looking forward to hopefully visiting their home towns at the end of the trip.
The couple moved to Australia 21 years ago.
Mrs Kamperman said the timing of the trip was also better for herself and her husband, who had recently had open heart surgery.
She said she had had to knit the jumper while he was in hospital to meet the deadline.
Mrs Kamperman has a long and celebrated history of designing and making clothes after first making baby clothes for her children, Helen, Michael and Jessie.
She managed a wool shop in Brighton for eight years and in the early 1990s she and two friends made a book of Australiana clothing designs.
Mrs Kamperman designed a line of crocheted Baby Born clothes for her granddaughter’s doll, which she sold to a magazine.
She also made clothes for opera, film and television commercials, including a dress she knitted for Judy Davis in one of her starring roles.
While she awaits the approaching trip, Mrs Kamperman said she was thinking of getting a new book together of designs similar to the jumper that won her the competition.
She said she would like to see Australian kids’ and baby clothes designs for mothers and grandmothers who have children or grandchildren overseas to remind them of Australia.
Mrs Kamperman said she already had a few designs worked out.
