Last week was a lot, well more than a lot. My father-in-law passed after a very short hospice stay (and several years of illness and caregiving), and we buried him the next day per Jewish law. This morning, my husband got up from shiva. Life is slowly returning to its rhythms, even though they’re new and different.

During shiva, nearly everyone asked what I’d knit for him, or noticed the red blanket on the back of a chair. They were not surprised that I’d knit it for my mother-in-law during one of her final hospitalizations before she died in 2022. Of course I knit for my in-laws. That’s what we do. We make for the people we love.

But I want to tell you about a hat.

In February 2012, I knit a Selbu Modern. It was one of my first stranded colorwork projects. My floats weren’t perfect, but I loved it and how I “cheated” with a variegated yarn to make the design look far more complicated than it was. I loved how it came together and how it fit.

A few days after finishing it, we visited my in-laws. My mother-in-law was standing on the stairs and literally plucked it off my head. She’d never shown much interest in my knitting before, so I went home a little chilly and completely delighted.

Every winter after that, I’d see her wearing it and secretly want it back. I kept meaning to knit a replacement but I couldn’t commit to new yarn. That hat was specific. It had history. I told her more than once: if you ever get tired of it, just say the word. She never did.

When we moved them closer to us, I quietly made sure the hat made the trip. Some things I’ve knit over the years have disappeared into the gift ether, I’ve made peace with that. But not this one. I (nearly) always knew the location of that hat, without any fancy modern tracking technologies.

When her cancer treatments came to an end and she entered hospice, one of the things I did in those early hard days of decisions, and even though it was August, was to bring the hat home.

That first autumn wearing it again was bittersweet. Yes, I wanted it back, but not like this. Today, with over fourteen years of wear, it’s still held up, which tells you something about the yarn, and maybe something about what we put into the things we make.

This is what I mean when I talk about intentional yarn therapy. Not that knitting fixes grief, or that a hat can substitute for a person. But that when we make something with care and intention, we’re putting something of ourselves into it. That object becomes a carrier. It holds warmth; literally, yes, but also the warmth of the moment it was made, the relationship it was made for, the years it was loved by someone else.

Getting it back wasn’t just reclaiming a hat. It was reclaiming a piece of a relationship I’m still figuring out how to carry now without her physical presence.

That’s why what we make matters. It’s not about perfect floats or stitches. Or a glamourous finished object. It’s about the intention behind the needles and hooks.