This came to me a while ago and I meant to write about this ear­li­er, but was going through some stuff (more below) and then went on a trip…

I got yarn in the mail! From my friend Amy :D She has so kind­ly asked me to try out her pat­tern and sent me this gor­geous yarn. I absolute­ly love the for­est tones in it, with the yel­lows and greens and blue. What a trea­sure. I love work­ing with var­ie­gat­ed yarn and see­ing how all the dif­fer­ent colours blend dif­fer­ent­ly in each stitch. Can­not wait to start mak­ing the cowl!

What cowl, you ask? The Love-Me-Knot Cowl!

The love knot (or Solomon’s knot as it is also called) is one of my favourite cro­chet stitch­es. Here’s a handy tuto­r­i­al if you had­n’t used it before. I find it very med­i­ta­tive, and makes a del­i­cate fab­ric with a nice drape. It also makes very quick projects because of the height of the stitch­es, per­fect for last-minute presents (or, if you’re like me, you might be mak­ing Christ­mas presents already). And cowls are espe­cial­ly great because they’re styl­ish when worn indoors and they don’t have long ends that get caught in coat zip­pers while wear­ing out­doors. It is gen­er­ous­ly shared by Amy to down­load for free on Rav­el­ry :D

But this par­tic­u­lar skein of yarn is more than just yarn. It actu­al­ly arrived at a time when I was very much not myself. I had just fin­ished my final semester, feel­ing lost, pur­pose­less and more than a lit­tle afraid after being in school on and off (more on than off) for 10 years, which result­ed in four degrees but lit­tle job expe­ri­ence. Sent out dozens of job appli­ca­tions and heard noth­ing in return. And then there was admin­is­tra­tive mix-up at school that could quite pos­si­bly jeop­ar­dize my grad­u­a­tion. My future was look­ing rather bleak.

And then this yarn came in the mail, with a love­ly hand drawn note, and gen­eros­i­ty and kind­ness that expects noth­ing in return. It remind­ed me of what I want to be for oth­ers and why I took the (long) path to be where I am today, and brought back some sense of pur­pose. I’m there­fore tru­ly blessed by this yarn, and most impor­tant­ly Amy’s friendship.

(And since then the admin­is­tra­tive mix-up has been fixed and I WILL grad­u­ate! But I digress…)

Do give Amy’s pat­tern a try! And for the begin­ning of fall I would like to pass on an Irish bless­ing that one of my favourite teach­ers shared with me:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.

Hap­py Sep­tem­ber! May you find joy and new learn­ing in all that you do.