I’m writing this at what I suspect is just the beginning of the Coronavirus outbreak and ‘lockdown’ in the UK, and I feel like things are tough already, aren’t they? But you know when you’re having a hard time and then all of a sudden, something happens that makes you stop and appreciate the small things? I had one of these moments last week, as I was walking back from one of my cancelled knitting classes.

I’m going to share the story here, but if you’d rather listen to me telling it, I’ve uploaded a voice-recording to Soundcloud (warning though – I get a bit emotional towards the end!). Find it here.

If you’re new to my work, you might not know that my ‘other’ job is running and teaching kids and adults knitting classes with Knitting For All. Up until last week, we’d been running out classes, but last Wednesday our school-based sessions were cancelled, kind of at the last minute following the latest government announcements.

Anyway, as I was returning home from the cancelled class, wheeling my big bag of knitting supplies back up the hill, I saw a group of teenagers coming towards me. Now, I’ve been teaching kids how to knit for quite a while, maybe 6 or 7 years, so some of those kids have now moved on to high school. Usually if I see one of them in the street they don’t make eye contact – I don’t think I’m cool enough for teenagers to say hi to!

So, I was walking up the hill and these teens were crossing the road. All of a sudden, two of them started jumping up and down, waving their arms and calling out “Hi Maddie, hi!”.

I realised that they were two of my former knitting pupils, now about 13 or 14 years old, and they were waving at me – going out of their way to get my attention (not paying attention to crossing the road! Ha!), and I just thought, how lovely! Here I am, having had to cancel all of my classes and feeling a bit upset about it, and these teens are jumping about in the street to say hello to their old knitting teacher.

It was such a small moment, but when you’re having a tough time, which I think we all are just now, it’s important to notice these little golden moments and treasure them.

I hope that my former pupils have retained enough of their knitting skills that they can pick-up their needles again during this period of lockdown, and that it will bring them some comfort, and maybe a little golden moment of their own.

Shawl featured is called Little Golden Moments and is released on Sat 28th March. Be the first to know when it’s available in my Ravelry Store and receive an exclusive discount code by signing up to my mailing list here.