Unlike this design, I am not pretty. God just did not make me that way. I did manage to convince 3 handsome men I was beautiful, however.

The last of these 3 men, Michael the most beautiful, was an artist.

A fine painter.

He possessed such a breath-taking and refined aesthetic that, when he died, taking his reflection of me with him, I was doubly bereft. Not only did he remove his beautiful mortal presence from my sphere of experience, he took mine too.

One day I was a young woman, the day he died, I was an old one.

It was as devasting and brutal as a horror movie I watched as a child where a beautiful female Vampire is unmasked and transformed into a crone within a single frame.

I spent my youth in Motorcycle leathers and a helmet and a delicate Oyster Hued cowl is not something I would have seriously contemplated for myself.

This pattern was released a year ago. One year into my own devastation (and by sad chance, not far away from the beginning of the designer’s own experience of major loss).

It was love at first sight but the incongruity of making something so pretty at a time when I felt so aesthetically unredeemable was unbearable.

But the lightness and femininity of this pattern tugged at something deep inside me and, a year later, when Jennifer Jenjoyce Design decided to revisit the Anniversary of her own Trauma, I decided to revisit the time of my own.

The Pattern is called the Fishwive’s Lace Shoal. (And Jen writes beautifully of it in her blog link text). it is a beautifully written pattern and its name is fitting for widows as Fishwives are, of course, justly famous for having to bear the loss of their menfolk (perhaps that is why they are also justly famous for their swearing).

So, here I am, with a yarn whose femininity is matched only by the pattern. The colour is Oyster which, by chance was my husband’s great food love.

I am near overwhelmed with a sense of only now being able to process and re-experience the gifts Michael gave. To cook, to listen to music and finally to nurture and cherish a sense of inner prettiness… what it means to carry a freshness and sweetness inside of me.

My experience of grief was primarily one of being buried alive with frequent “reprieves” of feeling as if I had been thrown overboard into the darkest wildest seas and abandoned forthwith.

The Oyster is a shore-loving creature. A mollusc who thrives in calm, clean and clear water. She shuns turbulence and what she makes of dirt, even the tiniest grain, is one of nature’s miracles. She is renowned for her aphrodisiac qualities and her metaphoric similarity for the deepest, and most secret, of that which is feminine, is famous.

I can feel myself being embraced by the sweetness and strength of all that is feminine whilst knitting this cowl.

So, with this knit I honour and nurture my identification with the deeply feminine mollusc who, when buried in mud, makes pearls of dirt.

My pretty Cowl is my Aria to her.