For me, this is heaven – I hope you’ll find some sweetness in it, too.
Nostalgia is a funny thing. There’s a certain smell – something like chocolate blancmange – and if it finds its way into my airspace, I am immediately transported to my primary school hall at lunch time. I am most often sent hurtling through emotional time and space by something else, though: music.
Every now and again I stumble upon an artist, album, or song that I used to love, and I play it on repeat until my family beg me to wear headphones. A couple of months after that it’ll stop being magic and I’ll move on, but for that time when I’m transported to elsewhen, it’s a gloriously easy fix for a mediocre mood.
During the first warm spring days of 2021, I was fiddling with crescent shawl construction, trying it out with different yarns and increases, trying to get an idea to stick. It wasn’t going well; the shaping always came out fine, but I couldn’t find a lace pattern that I liked. In frustration I grabbed some yarn I liked – two similar colours on the same base that were silky soft on the hands and looked beautiful held double – and sulked into the conservatory, hoping that sitting my by plant babies in the sunshine would help something click. I stuck some music on and started knitting a crescent shawl in stockinette stitch with yarn over increases, hoping an idea would come.
About 40 minutes later the album I’d put on was finished, and Spotify kept playing me more songs like it. A few in, it played Jimmy Eat World, and my brain went “…oh.” Because you see, I’d forgotten about them. As a teen I loved them almost as much as my precious Foo Fighters, but it had been years since I’d put them on. The combination of the song and the sun prompted the low key frustration to give way to buoyancy and that youthful conviction that everything will work out okay, and in that moment I knew just what to do with my knitting.
The resulting shawl is in two distinct halves: the comfort and ease of stockinette, which settles the shaping structure into your mind, and the nostalgia, represented here by a fishnet stitch, reminiscent of my style during my well-spent youth. The easily memorised pattern is perfect for knitting while your mind wanders, whether that’s to days gone by or a current Netflix binge watch. For me, this is heaven – I hope you’ll find some sweetness in it, too.
