Time, Travel and Pause for Celebration

Happiness Hat by Lisa Harding in multi-coloured Grace

For Olivia

...Olivia is a good enough friend to have given me the honour of being godmother to her and Richard's son, Jonathan. She is also a fellow-buggy pusher of yore, a neighbour, sportswoman and one of the general fundamental local elements mentioned in an earlier post. And for some reason I can't quite identify, I always want to knit stripes for her. Perhaps in my mind's eye, they're an indelible part of her silhouette as I first knew it - undeviatingly recognisable and incorporating many small children, shopping bags and Jenny, the springer spaniel....   To my complete astonishment so many years later I saw this figure recently  (albeit sadly now minus Jenny) vanishing like a dream around the corner at the end of our street.  I stepped up my pace, even as I told myself that for sure I'd find a completely different face if I caught up  .... But it was Olivia, constant and the same, despite any number of decades, only now taking small nephews footballing in the park.   

This week we're meeting to mark not just the successful launch into independence and the wider world of her wonderful son, but also to hear hot-off-the-plane reports of her own two-month world traveling odyssey with her husband, Richard - a trip, by the way, for which they worked and waited thirty years, so it better have been good!

Below is a section of Cladonia shawl by Kirsten Kapur, knit for her fiftieth birthday in Fiberspates Scrumptious lace - merino and silk mix