Made with love

My oldest friend knitted me this hat as part of my Christmas present. That in itself is special, but there’s an even more special story behind this hat.

When I was sorting through Mum’s belongs last year (it took me a while to do so, and because she died when carehome restrictions were still in place I’d not packed up her room, so I wasn’t sure what was there) I found some wool. Mum had been an avid knitter since childhood and had even managed to do a little knitting after she became ill.

In the course of a conversation with Oldest Friend I mentioned the wool and she asked if she could have it if I wasn’t going up use it.

Oldest Friend and I were friends at primary school. She was one of Mum’s pupils, her Mum was Snowy Owl for my Brownie pack, and in an odd coincidence my Aunt delivered her (I swear there are more than a dozen people in my hometown!), so of course I said yes. I warned her that the wool wasn’t fancy and wasn’t necessarily what she’d choose if she was shopping for wool herself. She said that didn’t matter, she’d like to have the wool if no one else wished to have it.

The hat pictured is made with that wool. It symbolises a lot of things, not least connections and friendship going back over forty years.