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A Pride Sweater for Yuna, our Dog - Crafting with Purpose | Day 18 of my 2023 Journal

Cecilie Conrad·Jan 18, 2023· 2 minutes

The Pride sweater!

My daughter just knitted a pride sweater for our oldest dog, Yuna.

Making knitting patterns is not my favorite thing to do, but on the other hand, I can not rely on pre-made ones, as I always want to knit something slightly different. So, I have to calculate, measure, and design.

I am good at math, yet I get this wrong all the time! Knitting patterns are math combined with reality and design, which tends to be … not as strict as clear math, at least not to me.

I envy my knitting girlfriends who are engineers. They always know exactly what they are doing. It seems unobtainable to me. I have to re-calculate, unravel, and try again over and over until I get it right.

With the pride sweater, we aimed to make the right one for the puppy Sally but somehow got it wrong by almost 20% - and luckily, the sweater fit our dog.

The same thing happened to a sweater I started last summer; it became much larger than I had planned for, and I gave up until I realized my son-in-law really liked the colors and the sweater was a perfect fit for him. So, now I knit the sleeves while thinking about how truly happy I am to have him in our family.

And I think about something else.

There is no such thing as coincidence. Nothing is ever done in vain. It all comes together. Not in the end, but always continuously.

So, I keep designing to the limits of my ability. I keep going strong with things I can almost do. I keep working on projects that seem impossible or chaotic, and I keep doing these things, smiling, and having faith in the big picture.

What the Ribble effects of the pride dog sweaters my daughter is now knitting will be, I might never know. But I know it is so much more important than it seems on the face of it.

On many levels.

Just like everything else. 

Love and light

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Cecilie Conrad

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Unschooling and Parent consulting, conversations, blogposts, and podcasts on family life and learning

Hi, I'm Cecilie Conrad. I'm a trained psychologist, mother of four, radical unschooler and full-time traveller. I have lived with unschooling for over a decade and help other families find their own path – whether it is about homeschooling, unschooling, or the bigger question of how you want to live as a family.

I offer guidance, conversations and talks. I call my work grandmothering – not coaching in the traditional sense, but presence, professional insight and concrete help navigating motherhood and finding your way home to your own values.

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