A VIP for a VIP
A very personal post about a very important pattern for a very important person
At the moment, life is not going as planned, although how do you plan for the sudden passing of a loved one? There are no manuals to read!
I was meant to be launching a pattern today. It was the first pattern where the sample used yarn from my Yarn Reclamation Project. I had also decided that this sample was to be my mum’s birthday present and I would launch the pattern in late September.
At the beginning of the summer, Mum had been quite tired and weak, but was undergoing treatment for the anaemia that had been caused by the type of cancer she had. To cheer her up, I decided to give her the shawl sized scarf as an early birthday present. I finished the project on August 16th thinking that would give me a week to do product photography before I visited. Unfortunately, Mum passed unexpectedly the next day and the last few months have been incredibly hard to navigate.
I had a new plan. I would wait until Mum’s birthday to launch the pattern and I would donate 50% of the sales proceeds to a cancer charity each year. But the closer it got to Mum’s birthday, I found it harder to work on the pattern. I’ve even struggled to put the scarf on. It’s folded in a pile of samples just staring at me.
I now have a new plan. I’m still launching the pattern because it’s a great pattern (even if I do say so myself!) and I know Mum would have loved it and would want me to share it. But I won’t be doing that until the new year now. I need a bit more time to get to grips with my new reality and ensure that I don’t rush it out.
But I do have another pattern that I designed for Mum which is of great significance to my knitwear design business, too.
Back in 2020, as we all went into lockdown, Mum had just completed the first round of cancer treatment following an unsuccessful operation to remove the tumour the previous year. This was Mum’s second time fighting cancer and her first fight had left extensive scarring that meant this new tumour couldn’t be removed. But Mum was determined to fight this so treatment and monitoring began. We knew she would have to live with it, we knew that time was perhaps borrowed, but we knew it would be managed at every stage.
Living away from my family at this time was hard. I couldn’t be there for them, they couldn’t be there for me. I couldn’t even see my partner and my previous bridal accessory business was no longer viable as so many were cancelling their weddings. For a number of years, I’d had an idea to write about the mental health benefits of crafting and encouraging people to craft for that reason and I thought now was the perfect time to start.
Despite designing bridal accessories for 17 years previously, I hadn’t really thought about the design side of knitting. But I had been working on a project to demonstrate reversible stitch patterns to my readers. And then one day, after speaking to Mum on the phone and feeling stressed about not being able to visit, I decided to turn this exercise in reversible stitches into a scarf for Mum. It was my way of coping with the situation and I was also doing something nice for her. The journey to design and create this scarf has quite an amusing backstory which I will be detailing more in a series of behind the scenes posts called Creative Journeys, but for now, I can tell you that this pattern was named after Mum and became The JEE.
This very important pattern was not only the first pattern I ever worked on, not only was it the pattern that set me down this path, but it was also designed for a very important person to me. And she loved her scarf, wearing it until the very end.
I first launched the pattern back in February of this year (I had to get it right!) and I relaunched it last month in honour of Mum. Like the pattern I had intended to launch today, 50% of the sales proceeds will be donated to charity going forward. And the charity for 2023/24 is Cancer Research UK. Each year, on Mum’s birthday, I will make the donation and from next year, I will be launching a new pattern around this time of year where part of the proceeds will also be donated to that year’s chosen charity.
I have provided the link to the pattern further up for those of you who may like to knit this gorgeously textured scarf. And if you do, just know that any donations will go to help those living with this cruel disease. And also…hopefully…find ways of curing and preventing it so that others don’t have to lose their loved ones because of it.
Until next time…
It's so important to honour the need to take time for yourself in your grief. As you say the pattern will be launched with no rush. The JEE is just lovely.