Meet Scarfie.
Like most of my son's possessions (especially the stuffed variety that inhabit his bed), it has a name that is at once endearing and descriptive. Scarfie was knit up quickly about six years ago when my son, having watched me make several prayer shawls, asked for a blanket of his own. I was still a pretty new knitter, with an underdeveloped stash, so I pulled out yarn leftover from my very first finished object and made him a scarf, promising to knit something bigger for him later.
From the very start, Scarfie has lived on my son's bed and has served, despite it's scarfliness, as a blanket for hugging as one falls asleep at night. Scarfie has served as a blanket for the smaller stuffed animals, and has starred as a fully-alive character in countless imaginary stories (he once was cast as a grape-juice drinking alien from Venus. It was a long story.).
Scarfie rode to school around my son's neck last year, but he was told by his buddies that purple wasn't really a guy color, so Scarfie decided to stay at home from then on. For one brief shining moment this winter, though, when an inexplicable amount of snow fell in central Mississippi, Scarfie went outside to fulfill his created purpose.
I suppose, though, Scarfie fulfills his created purpose each and every day. It doesn't have to be snowing for him to warm my son's heart, which in turn warms mine.
