When I was young my mum taught me to knit. My memories are of wonderful handmade things (that my mum finished for me of course), however, her memories are of dropped stitches, stretched knits and ravelled wool. How rude!
I have since picked up the needles again and found that I can knit (just basic stuff) and I can create lovely things. I like to share these things with my friends and my family and they are so kind and tell me they love them!
My friend who lives in Australia has just had a baby so I thought I would send her a hand knitted toy. To make the toy stand on it's own I fill the bottom with kidney beans or chick peas. This is fine until you need to wash them so I sent a note to say she mustn't wash it because of the chick peas. A week or so later I received a text from her saying thank you for the gift but it had been quarantined due to something about chick peas. I'm sure she thought sending a baby chick peas was very strange. I now need to buy some proper plastic beads to put in future projects.