This time last year, I lost my handknit Alpaca sweater.
Nearly immediately after finishing…after a year and a half on the needles.
My very first sweater for myself.

The one who’s yarn came not only from Alpaca in my region but from a mill only 20 miles from my house.

My heart dropped as I tore around the house and through the car looking for the sweater. Nothing.
I tried to picture when I had last seen her and couldn’t clearly bring it up. (had I left it on the car and drove away?)

I hadn’t left the house in days, due to being sick, except for one trip into the food co-op.
So, I reached out to a good friend there and asked her to ask around. Nothing.

After a day or two, I had very nearly released the sweater into the land of the lost with peace (mostly), when I found her…unceremoniously
stuffed under a couch cushion. Egads.

She was NOT happy to find herself crammed in there, neglected, after having only a brief few weeks of honor, caresses, and oohing and
ahhing. See, she may have heard whispers about the sweater from Ireland.

When Ellis was 8 months old, we (my husband and I) took him on my first, and at this point only, trip overseas to Ireland to walk the Dingle
Peninsula. We walked the Irish countryside on the Dingle Peninsula for nearly 10 days, weaving in and out of sheep herds and crumbling stone walls, the only pressure in our days was which pint to get with lunch and to get to our next village and find dinner before the babe melted down.

Anyway, on this trip, I found a gorgeous green sweater knit in the region from local wool.

Now, it wasn’t handknitted but it was special…and an investment.

A few weeks after returning home, I wore it to a wedding and never saw it again.

I have a faint, very, very faint, memory…really just a ghost of a memory, the kind that you can’t really be sure is true… of setting it on top of the car for just a moment. Unfortunately, I’ve been known to do that.

I often carry way too many things at any given time and set them on top of the car as I open the doors.
(Hmmm…”I often carry way too many things at any given time”. If that doesn’t speak volumes I don’t know what does…I’d like to say that’s changed over the last year, but I’m not sure I can claim that totally!)

Like that expensive cellphone, that I only recalled was up there when it flew off the car in a blur and smashed to bits on the road beside my
wide eyes.

So, I suspect that the Irish sweater spent its days rotting away in some damp, dirty roadside ditch. The horrors.
I know, I know, maybe some lucky human spotted her on the side of the road and could not believe their good fortune. I sincerely hope that’s
the case.

When my handknit sweater came up missing, you can imagine that my mind immediately thought, did I set it on top of the car?

And when I couldn’t find it…I flowed from frantic panic to massive disappointment to finally a sense of release. Easy come, easy go. 😉

And gratitude.

If I was going to lose it, I may as well release it peacefully and be so very grateful for the lessons learned and time spent knitting her and
nothing is permanent after all. Because I learned a lot while slowly working on her and I was elated with the fit in the end…after fretting about it.

But then I didn’t lose it after all, simply neglected it, and it’s even more fun to learn a lesson without the most painful part!

Anyway…this is really about gratitude.

Gratitude for having held and loved something for the time you had, gratitude for friends in your life who will drop everything and ask
around after your sweater, gratitude for the process…and gratitude for enough wisdom to allow the release of what you’re holding onto.

Today, that is what struck me, the act of letting go of what you’re holding on to. Let it go. The disappointment, the resentment, the fear that this moment is not how it “should be”, the loss of normalcy, the fear that change is inherently bad. It’s the holding on that causes us so much pain. Make some space and peace and love will have room to flow in.

I have deep gratitude for you. I don’t take it lightly or for granted that you allow me in your inbox every week and share in my story.
And those messages you send to me, they literally make my day.

Thank you, friend, I’m grateful for the connection.

In Deep Kinship,
Tina