When I was really little, maybe 5 or 6, I stumbled upon a little hot cross bun beaded charm bracelet at our local Sears department store. I must have known the nursery rhyme about hot cross buns, perhaps from one of my dad’s piano books–maybe it was one of the songs my sister and I danced to in the dining room as he played? That could have been the source of the interest in it, because to this day, I have yet to actually eat a hot cross bun. There was only one hot cross bun bracelet, and for some reason, I fell in love with it instantly, was drawn to it, wanting it like I don’t remember ever wanting something before (well, in my scant number of years on the planet at that point). I don’t know how to articulate it, but I felt like I needed it, as if it was somehow going to make me happy, complete my 5-year old life, but not in some shallow materialistic way. Something more…je ne sais quoi.

I never asked my parents to buy it for me, but I’d “visit” it each time we were at Sears, hunching down in the jewelry section and rolling it between my fingers. And just, well, wanting it. Until one day, it was gone. I would wonder about who bought it, and were they appreciating it, loving it the same way I would have? That Sears was eventually bulldozed, but I would think about that bracelet from time to time, half with regret that I never asked for it and half with optimism that one day, in some flea market or thrift store, I’d stumble upon it once again.

Someone recently asked me to design a crochet hot cross bun for Easter, one of my favorite Etsy customers who gives me what I call “crochet challenges.” The above memories flooded back as I googled for pictures of hot cross buns and started reading the wikipedia page about them: giving half to someone is said to maintain the friendship in the coming year; also giving half to someone who is ill is supposed to encourage better health. (Can someone give me, I don’t know, 6,000 of them then?!) I took my crochet hot cross bun assignment to the last Knit Club meeting and designed it from start to finish while dining on nachos and drinking a dirty martini. (The 5-year old has grown up, transitioning from the blinding fluorescents of department stores to the dim lights of neighborhood bars…). Note to self: this seriously impressed the ladies, commenting that they didn’t even need to make anything at Knit Club because they were happy to live vicariously through my yarn creations. (No, you must make things!!!)

Anyway, click below for the hot cross bun pattern to make your very own, and may good friendship, as well as good health, follow.