I grew up with air that was heavy from the Orinoco humidity, which stifled outsiders, yet blanketed its natives. In the streets, sweat was our natural moisturiser, which made the bodies of young women glisten with shiny splendour, attracting young men to make their move. Our fabrics of choice were the cool airiness of cottons and silks, which allowed us to feel our landscape, and bank it to memory. 

Moving to a colder climate required a new approach to the body. The sheer exploitation of my limbs would cause senseless moaning for days long gone. There was no relief when the sun shone; the cold would wrap my bones and cling on for dear life.

My paternal grandmother soon taught me how to knit and crochet. I remember using this new found knowledge, not to keep myself warm, but as a mechanism to lure many a crush. For one, I knitted a scarf in return for a book of poems. The poems I still have. The scarf, a distant memory looped with black and grey wool (the colour of philosophers, poets and artists I imagined), buried deep in some soul's subconscious. 

Today I think back to the scarf I made, the knitted hat my great-grandmother left me, the quilt with soft wool inbetween that my grandmother made me and the Barbour wool jumper that enshrouds me as we speak, and find new comfort in an old new material that bears new memories and ancient histories that have become a part of my existent, my context, and will make for more stories to come.