1990 Carat - manual trans..

the sifter base plastic hardware was replaced (all of it including the
plastic ears) last year (9 to 12 months) - the shifting was good...

recently a weird thing appears (not all the time) - sometimes I have hard
time to get out of 1st gear - it looks it get stuck in 1st and I have slow
down re-clutch to get it out...

I looked at shifter base and everything is OK nothing broken.. the rear (at
the trans) is OK too not sloppy

why? and what else to look at?

please help...

thanks in advance

dan