My Nanna is ill. Not the sort of thing you recover from, so I'm doing things to make her feel better. She doesn't like a fuss, but I noticed that her hot water bottle lives in a tatty old grey cover, so I'm making her a new one. I found a warm woollen jumper in the Cancer Research charity shop (I figure they need my £4 about now) and I felted it. It went into the washing machine man-sized and came out Barbie-sized. For some reason that really appealed to my inner child.
I cut out the felt and stitched it up, using big buttons because my Nanna's fingers are sore and she will find them easy to manipulate. It is by no means perfect - it is far too wide for my hot water bottle because I over-estimated how big the seams would need to be, and the curve on one side is not smooth, but it is full of my baraka. Baraka is a Sufi word that is difficult to translate into English. It means prayer, but it also means personal energy. It means that every stitch that I make is infused with my well-wishes and my love. My hot water bottle cover will be there for Nanna when I can't be, radiating good feeling. It is a similar concept to an American healing hands quilt.
It is not quite finished - it needs a hood to cover the top of the hot water bottle, and I will add a button to the hood, so the cover can be opened from the top or the bottom, but you get the idea.
If a handmade object can hold something so abstract in concept as a stitch (a stitch only exists in context with fabric and thread) then surely it can hold an abstract concept such as love.
