\u23f1 ~3 min reading<\/p>\n\n\n
In the fall, Irochka saw her grandmother knitting a scarf. The knitting needles tapped softly against each other, and the thread from the ball slowly turned into something beautiful, soft, and warm.<\/p>\n\n
"Grandma, teach me," Irochka asked.<\/p>\n\n
Grandma smiled, put down her scarf, and took out two smaller knitting needles from the chest. She gave Irochka a ball of soft pink wool\u2014soft as a cat's paw.<\/p>\n\n
\u2014 Shall we knit you a hat?<\/p>\n\n
"No," Irochka shook her head. "I want it for Zoryanka. She's cold in winter without a hat.".<\/p>\n\n
Zoryanka is the younger sister, she was three years old, and she always took any hat off her head.<\/p>\n\n
"That's a good idea," said the grandmother. "Sit down like this. This is how to hold the knitting needles..."<\/p>\n\n
The first evening, Irochka simply learned to cast on stitches. On the second evening, she knitted the first row. Then another. Then more.<\/p>\n\n
At first it was exciting. Irochka would come home from school, throw down her backpack, and run to the ball. The hat grew slowly, but you could see how a real thing was being born from the thread.<\/p>\n\n
But after a week, Irochka got tired. The loops sometimes got tangled, and she had to untie them. Her fingers went numb. And the hat, only half-finished, lay in its basket, waiting.<\/p>\n\n
Irochka took her in her arms less and less often.<\/p>\n\n
Then I forgot about it for a whole week.<\/p>\n\n
Then - for a month.<\/p>\n\n
Meanwhile, winter had truly arrived\u2014with frost, crunching snow, and blizzards. Every day, Zoryanka ran outside in her father's old hat, which always slipped over her eyes.<\/p>\n\n
One day in December, my grandmother was cleaning out the closet and found a basket with an untied hat. She brought it to the kitchen and placed it in front of Irochka.<\/p>\n\n
"This is yours, have you forgotten?"<\/p>\n\n
Irochka lowered her eyes.<\/p>\n\n
"I... I don't want any more.".<\/p>\n\n
\u2014 Why?<\/p>\n\n
\u2014 Because it's boring. And it's long.<\/p>\n\n
Grandma sat down next to me. Borscht was bubbling on the fire, the kitchen was warm and smelled of fried onions.<\/p>\n\n
\u2014 You know, Irochko. I have a question for you.<\/p>\n\n
\u2014 Which one?<\/p>\n\n
"Imagine you've come from the cold. You're very cold. And I'm giving you a hat\u2014but it's only half-finished. It has a hole instead of a crown. Will you be warm?"<\/p>\n\n
Irochka laughed.<\/p>\n\n
"No, grandma. It's cold.".<\/p>\n\n
\u2014 So. A hat is only warm when it's tied all the way. Halfway up, it's not a hat at all. It's just a coiled thread.<\/p>\n\n
Irochka thought. She looked at the basket. At the half-hat. At the ball that was waiting.<\/p>\n\n
\u2014 And if I do, will Zoryanka be warm?<\/p>\n\n
\u2014 Very warm. And your heart will be warm. Because there is nothing more pleasant than giving a loved one something you made yourself.<\/p>\n\n
Irochka took the knitting needles. Surprisingly, her fingers remembered how to hold them. The first five loops came out crooked, but then they came out straight, just like before.<\/p>\n\n
Every evening now she sat down next to her grandmother. She knitted for half an hour. Grandma told her about her childhood - about the cows, about the mill, about the sheaves in the field. Irochka listened, the knitting needles clinked. The hat grew.<\/p>\n\n
The hat was ready by Christmas.<\/p>\n\n
Grandma showed me how to sew the crown to make a round dome. Irochka tied a thin pom-pom \u2014 like a little pink snowball.<\/p>\n\n
When Zoryanka woke up in the morning, Irochka was already sitting by her bed with a hat in her hands.<\/p>\n\n
\u2014 Zoryanko, look.<\/p>\n\n
The starling rubbed her eyes. She saw the hat. She squealed with joy. She stretched out her arms.<\/p>\n\n
"Mine? Mine?"<\/p>\n\n
\u2014 Yours.<\/p>\n\n
She put on the hat \u2014 exactly on her head, as if it were made to order. And she didn't take it off anymore. She wore it all winter.<\/p>\n\n
And Irochka, when she looked at her little sister in that pink hat, felt something strange in her chest\u2014something proud and quiet at the same time. And she knew: it was because she had finished it.<\/p>\n\n\n
\ud83d\udca1 The warmest thing is the one that is tied to the last loop.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n
Irochka started knitting a hat for her younger sister, but gave up halfway through. Grandma showed her how a finished project differs from an abandoned one.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":3238,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_focus_keyword":""},"class_list":["post-2266","istoriya","type-istoriya","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kazkaland.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/istoriya\/2266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kazkaland.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/istoriya"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kazkaland.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/istoriya"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kazkaland.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kazkaland.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}