Category: Knitted Shawls

I just returned from a vacation tour of Portugal. Some of my most relaxing moments involved sitting on the bus, knitting and watching the budding vineyards and olive orchards of the Portuguese countryside go by.

This was my first big trip overseas by myself. I had gone with school groups, with family, and with my husband, but never alone. And I loved it.

I found a tour company that offered “solo” tours for those of us who are widowed, divorced, or traveling alone for any reason. I eagerly booked a trip to Portugal, a place I had never been. That was part of the fun, discovering and exploring a country I knew little about and making memories solely mine.

As a knitter, I naturally researched and found yarn shops in Porto and Lisbon, thinking I’d pay them a visit and maybe blog and post photos of these new-to-me shops. However, that didn’t happen. My tour kept me on my feet and exploring all kinds of sights, sounds, and activities I would never have discovered on my own. I took naps during the few hours of downtime in those cities, never getting around to finding those yarn stores.

Yet I found a wonderful yarn store without any planning or looking at all. While walking around a lovely pedestrian street in the old part of Coimbra, an ancient university town, I happened to find one right smack in front of me. I stepped in to find two entire walls of the shop stuffed with bins of brightly colored Portuguese wool, available for far less than I would have paid in the US. I eagerly purchased three skeins of wool yarn in a mustard yellow color, the same used to decorate tiles and houses in this town and in many other parts of Portugal. I learned that the use of this yellow color was introduced by the Moors centuries ago to symbolize happiness and sunshine – just the color to symbolize my adventure here, too.

Why only three skeins? I wanted a project just for this trip. I wanted a small, manageable knitting project I could work on in the bus, as I relaxed at the hotel before going to bed, and maybe even on the long plane ride going home. And that it was. I made a shawl, using a memorized pattern and favorite stitch combinations, constructing my own personal souvenir of a green and pleasant land feeding me with healthy and delicious food, green wines, and the charm of centuries past.

I will have this shawl for the rest of my life, the sunny yellow of the wool reminding me of a perfect day in Coimbra, eating pastel de nata (custard pastries!) and milky coffee for lunch, strolling the streets with new friends and happening upon a yarn shop, walking down cobblestone streets to visit a cathedral I swear I’d already seen while writing a scene in a novel under construction.

I’ll remember quiet drives on that big comfortable bus with a seat to myself, calming and pleasantly knitting that yellow shawl, glancing up now and then to see the vineyards budding in the springtime, my mind forgetting anything anywhere else.

With blessings for calm, quiet knitting…wherever you may find yourself, Cindy

Cynthia Coe is the author of The Prayer Shawl Chronicles, a series of fictional stories woven together by the theme of human connections made through prayer shawls and the craft of knitting. Her newest book is her first historical novel, Knitting Through Time: Stories of How We Learned to Knit. Learn more by visiting her Author Page at this link.