Well here it is: 2020's weather. 3m, 732 rows (2 rows=1 day), 70,368 stitches, 1kg of wool. My small world and I have sat together every day; I witnessed its dramas and joys and it witnessed mine. Now I get to see this cycle play out all over again, all new. What a gift that is.
Enormous thanks to all of you who have followed and cheered me along this year. What a ride it's been. If you've enjoyed The Scarf, I'd love if you would consider one or all of the following:
2) Pre-order my book! A STILL LIFE is "a luminous, tender memoir about illness and disability, despair and resilience, pain and joy - and a manifesto on how to live." I think you'll love it. Available from all good UK bookshops and out soon on 18th Feb.
3) STAY TUNED! I have lovely stuff to share with you this year. I'll be knitting the weather again, using an entirely different design, and have a beautiful new project planned around small acts of daily noticing, recording, creating.
Thanks so much ❤️
Oh, and if you'd like to follow the scarf back through the year, here's last month's update. You can find each previous month by following it back through the replies, all the way back to that crazy viral post back in January.
I need to get something personal off my chest. Forgive the self-indulgence. I've been feeling very angry this last couple of days and I think I've finally realised what some of that anger is about. I thought I'd share in case it resonates with anyone else.
I've been chronically unwell my whole life. Because of that, I never get to do everything I want. If I want to go to, say, the cinema or out shopping, or visit somewhere, I might have to wait weeks for someone to have the capacity to take me.
I've had to stay inside, isolated, for the vast majority of my life. I don't get to see many people. I don't get to go to clubs or do activities or social things. I don't mean this in a self-pitying way, I love my small, rich life, but those are the practicalities of it.
I'm going to do a slow thread of self-care suggestions for Christmas that I've tried before. Not all of them will be useful/meaningful to everyone, but here are some things that have helped me to celebrate and feel happier and more peaceful.
First, one of the most powerful things I've ever done is to decide to give myself a good Christmas. Not to mentally transfer that to anyone else, where they might have to guess or be responsible for my day, but to take on full responsibility for my own enjoyment, however I can.
That gift that I reaaaally want and that someone else might not realise is important to me, or that it doesn't feel appropriate to ask for? I buy it for myself, if I can afford it. I wrap it up under the tree. "To me, love me." I did it when I was single. I still do it now.
Ok, here is a difficult truth: friendships take up a huge amount of energy and mental processing, so when you have almost no energy at all and life is very fragile, it means you can't sustain many very well.
What you have of yourself, you need to hold back to sustain self-care, maybe your work, maybe to nurture a partner/children. Often you have enough for that and nothing else, and so everyone else feels let down. You have to live with that and it sucks but it's all you have.
I'm constantly letting people down. Constantly. I hate it. And it's harder these days, if anything, because now there is an expectation of a lot of digital contact between friends too - that we'll treat friendships a bit like social media. Lots of 'likes' and interaction.