That little pattern book that has spent thirteen years travelling the world with us, and when it was closed today for perhaps the last time, so did a particularly colourful chapter of our life. Twenty-four colours to be exact now knitted into six little jumpers and six little funny hats that match, each with a story to tell.
For someone who lays no claim to being "a knitter" but who likes things "just so", the first five-and-a-half weren't that easy, and perhaps to illustrate just how far things have come in that respect, the last bit of this one was only unpicked once. The book was not written in French but in the beginning at least it may as well have been, and it's true that the occasional words muttered during the process might have been French but almost certainly weren't.
The words spoken in the wool shops as we tracked down supplies over the years often were (French) although in the early years it could have been Mongolian for all we knew, but we always managed through a combination of giggles and hand signals and the enthusiasm of all around us to find a colour that looked as though it would suit whichever baby was at the time growing more rapidly than the jumper.
This one went quite well comparatively no doubt aided by an absence of rushing for trains or waiting in airports during its construction, and went off today with Great-Grandma's buttons attached, in a post bag optimistically marked "Priority". We are somewhat confident that even given the struggles of our presently overloaded mail system, that a hundred kilometres or so should not be a stretch, and that she won't have outgrown it by the time it arrives.
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