I love September and I cannot lie.

Out of respect for the faithful old-timers who’ve been reading these newsletters for a few years now, I made a decision this year that I’d skip the Woo-hoo-September’s-here! post. Apart from anything else, I suspect your mailboxes are already full of messages from other wool shops telling you how great it is that autumn’s here and it’s time to get your needles out and make sweaters again. You all can see the leaves in the street and the earlying evenings for yourselves. You don’t really need me to go on about it as well – right?

Except that now that I’ve resolved not to speak about it, my inner goer-onner (which is perhaps not that inner after all), feels even more compelled to go on about it. In fact I’m ashamed to say that I may have slightly lost track of time and appropriateness whilst delivering an expostion on September to a recent customer who was harmlessly lamenting the end of summer. To that knitter and all other seasonally disordered knitters, I am very sorry. The truth is that I just love September and this is why..

1. For the return of that familiar routine in the rhythm of the day – The smiley lollypop lady at the zebra crossing in the morning, the urgent bikes down Clapton Passage on the way in, the chattering home-time kids coming out of school at 4, the grownups hurrying past with swingy lanyards at closing time.
2. For the beginning of new learning – the evening class year has begun with a brand new (to me) course, language textbook, a new notebook, freshly made alphabet flash cards and thrilling homework assignments.
3. For starting again with the things that stopped: returning to the cutting table and machines at Late Night Sewing, and getting back on the pilates mat and gradually cranking my out of practice joints into action again
4. For seeing Ethiopians celebrate Enkutatash, Jews preparing Rosh Hashanah and Muslims marking Mawlid al-Nabi – all within the spiritual holy mile of Lower Clapton Road.
5. For Sweater Club beginning again – hooray! – and seeing Helen Woolkitchen lighting up the shop doorway with her smile every Thursday evening when she arrives to work with me on taking another 6 knitters on the miraculous journey with their balls of wool to finished sweaters over the next 5 weeks.
6. For it being time to get on with all the plans made earlier in the year for the festive windows, events and projects now within sight.
7. For the deliveries of new stocks of wonderful wools that have been in abeyance over the summer.
8. For the return of the cold-weather-only knitters that we don’t see between the onset of spring and the end of the summer, who rocking up to get back in the saddle with balaclavas and beanies and possibly even a vest or a sweater this year too!
9. For the end of the embargo on Patty Lyons new book and the new colours of Manchelopis that I’ve been dying to tell you all about
10. For the prospect of chillier days when we can wear our sweaters again and all the enthusiasm that brings to begin a completely new sweater project.

..for all of that, I love September and almost certainly always will, which also means I may well feel compelled to go on about it in another post like this around this time next year.