The Raveled Sleave of Care,

 In my second year of university, I lived in a boarding house with four other female students. We became friends and one of the friendships survived graduation and Moving On and has been a life-long joy to me. I was paging through my yearbook from that year a few days ago, preparing to throw it away (downsizing it are us, in a small way) and I came across this photo.

I wish it were colour as my friend was an accomplished knitter and was in the process of making herself a plaid school scarf in the school’s colours of bright red, bright yellow and deep blue. We were going to go to a football game at another university, and scarves in school colours ere ’de rigeur’. She finished it, as I recall, on the train on the way to the game, with my help in weaving in the ends where she had changed colours.

I was not (knot?) an accomplished knitter. I had, up until the time we became friends, only ever knitted one sad uneven square for a Brownie badge. But I decided, and at this remove of time I cannot remember why, to knit a vest for my boyfriend for Christmas. I bought boring brown yarn and a pattern of the simplest possible garment, and worked diligently away at this epic. I vaguely recall finishing it and blocking at home in the days before Christmas and mailing it to the bf. Who did not, to my recollection, acknowledge receipt of it.

I had a scarf. My mother had made it for me and she, while a long-time knitter, did not knit at tension well. The scarf was lovely, of good quality wool, but she had made it in bands in garter stitch and my goodness did it stretch. At a home football game in my third year, I recall my boyfriend (another one) and I both wearing it. At the same time. At some point my mother took two rectangles off the end, lined and sewed them into an envelope into which the rest of the scarf folded, making a pillow.

This scarf lived with us until our YD entered at our alma mater and was given the scarf. It survived four years with her and was passed on, again, to one of my husband’s nieces when she became a student there. I have no idea where it is now; it did not come back from that adventure. And I cannot imagine to what lengths it has gone.

I have become a not-bad knitter since those days. But since I made a scarf and, I think, a hat for the grandkid when she was a small girl, I have not done much. There are partly finished mittens in a knitting basket and a drawer full of patterns, needles and ends of wool. These, I think, can all go to the ‘Reuse Centre’ that runs at one of our waste disposal sites. Along with a lot of other craft items. But, first, green garbage bag time; there is a lot of junk in my sewing and laundry room drawers. A lot of junk.

I wonder what happened to my friend’s amazing technicolour scarf.