A gift from the heart

Wednesday night, my friend, Jessica, surprised me with an incredibly generous and thoughtful gift from the heart. She gifted me with this--a new Cascading Leaves shawl!

She stressed it was not a replacement for the one I gave up, but she hoped it would make up for its loss in some small way. I am especially touched that she did this for me given that she has so little free time for knitting and that she's also recovering from a recent death in her family. I highly value the caring and good thoughts she knit into every stitch. Thank you, Jessica, I love it!

All of my knitting friends truly understand how difficult it was for me to part with the shawl I had designed and knit for myself. Non-knitters would not understand how much of myself was part of that shawl or even appreciate the time and effort it took to bring it into being. It was no machine knit, off-the-rack, shawl identical to thousands of others that you might buy at Walmart for $10. That said, I do not begrudge giving the shawl to my MIL, though I would much rather have seen her wear it in life rather than in death.