Retrospectively REWRITTEN DUE TO TECHNICAL Difficulties in 2026...
She* asked me for a blanket in “Missoni Style” (it’s what she calls my work; it’s what my crochet work reminds her of) in “the colours of the sea,” because “she feels calm looking at those colours”. I understood this as the meaning of the nervous system regulating sea properties, the one that whooshes in long exhalations and pulls you back into yourself. The sea that steadies your breath without asking anything in return. The sea that she and I both know as adults, we know, and we seek when in need. The sea, which my nanny, for all her wisdom and care, never had the chance to experience and feel first-hand.
She did like my ARTful ARTiculation blanket…. When I asked her to narrow down the style and pick from past BLANKETS.
*She? Who is She? The Cat’s Mother? I hear you ask:
For you!
I feel obliged to explain: She is my oldest friend, someone I have known since the age of 15 and who I see when we happen to be in the same geographical area, who has been a support and a guide to me for the majority of my life. One of those friends, who, when you meet, no matter what time has passed, you jump straight back into the same quality connection, each and every time, doesn’t fade, and only gets better with time. <3
So I began with flowers.
Brown ones.
Flowers my nanny taught me to make, the ones that feel like the first language I ever learned with my hands. They were never meant to be oceanic, but they are the anchor of everything I make. I squared them up, one by one, and let them become part of the seabed, the quiet, earthy undercurrent beneath the blues and greens she had asked for. Representing the sand, without which the sea and the beach could not be grounded to the earth and to our experiences of the whooshing, calming noise would not be grounded, the same sand we stand upon as we listen.
From there, the blanket grew in kaleidoscope crochet, the kind that shifts colour like light passing through water. Rows that ripple. Rows that refract. Rows that behave like tide lines, never quite repeating themselves, even when the pattern says they should. And in the corners, I added popcorn stitches (popcorn TAG) because I love how they lift off the surface. The tiny 3D buoys bob and play, refusing to stay flat. A little bit of joy, a little bit of mischief, a little bit of texture that says: look closer, there’s more here, this is a multi-sensory experience…
She had chosen this direction for me, by reminding me of one of my older blankets, the one full of flowers, the one whose story I wrote about in Artful Articulation and later mentioned in Rainbow Reverie also. A riot of colour, a garden in motion, a way to give meaning and purpose to flowers I created as innovative coasters a VERY long time ago, which sat around my workshop waiting to become a collective.
A seafarer here is quieter, but it carries the same lineage: women teaching women, hands teaching hands, patterns teaching patience, and experiencing a soothing repetition of small movements, whether they are looping the next stitch of a crochet hook onto the blanket or listening to the sea coming in and out, working with the wind in whatever direction nature calls.
And somewhere in the making, I realised that crochet has its own version of the sea’s whoosh:
The soft pull‑through.
The tiny catch of yarn.
The rhythmic slip of yarn over the hook and down again.
A repetition so small you barely notice it, until suddenly you do, and then you realise it’s been regulating you all along. My nanny didn’t have the ocean, but she had crochet. She had the hush‑hush‑hush of hook and yarn, the quiet tide of making. And she passed that regulation on to me without ever naming it.
So this blanket is a meeting point:
my nanny’s flowers,
my friend’s sea,
my own need for the soothing repetition of small sounds.
A land‑rooted, sea‑bound, blooming and drifting all at once.
A blanket that carries the whoosh of waves and the whisper of women’s hands, folded into every stitch.
Thank You for reading!
