Just recently I've had more messages than ever asking me to write up my animal patterns but it's something that I'm just not in a position to do just yet. There are several reasons for this, some personal, some financial and some to do with time and the pleasurable spending of it. All of my reasons are valid to me but are not necessarily understandable to anyone else because they are born out of my personal situation, so I'm not going to write them down here and invite public debate. I do hope though that circumstances will change for me and that I'll be able to share my patterns at some point in the future

Although thinking about writing up the patterns has put me in mind of a very, very old tale that I once heard, it's an allegory of sorts I believe.

There once was a girl who lived in a far off land (nowhere near here you understand). She loved to bake and thought a day incomplete without making at least one sweet treat to share with her friends and family.

Her friends and family were delighted by the delicacies that she made and suggested that she begin to sell her wares so that the people of the village could enjoy them too. And so the girl put up notices on nearby trees and soon there were a few people dropping by her kitchen each day to buy what she had baked. Over time news of the girl who baked spread across the land and soon there were queues of people standing outside the small cottage where the girl baked. Often many people went away with nothing as there was simply not enough to go around and sometimes people even squabbled over a particularly delicious looking cake. This made the girl feel sad. When she had been baking for just her family and friends she could keep everyone happy, but there was no way in the world that she could please all of the strangers on her doorstep.

She started to get notes through her letterbox. Some notes were from people who believed that one of her cakes would help heal a loved one or make a sad child happy. She tried her best to make cakes for everyone, wanting to bring happiness to others with her handmade treats but again she could only help a few. There were notes too from people who wanted her to write down her recipes because they believed that was all they needed to make exactly the same cakes and some people even called her selfish for not sharing her recipes with them.

When she baked the girl felt true peace in her heart and she often sang as her fingers kneaded dough or stirred batter. But when she had to face the queue of expectant people at her door she began to feel worried that she made some of them discontented and a little grain of sadness crept into the girl's life.

One day a note arrived from a book vendor who offered to publish her recipes so that others could make her cakes in their own homes. The girl thought long and hard because writing down the recipes and testing them would take a lot of time and meant there would be no time for baking for many, many weeks and baking was truly her joy in life. Still, she bowed to the pressure of the people and laid down her apron and set to work testing and writing and testing some more.

At last the day came when the book was finished and many people arrived on her doorstep to buy copies of the girl's recipes. This time everyone went away happily and the girl was happy too, for a time.

But, as is so often the way in these stories, there was not a happy ending, for many people were unable to make their cakes exactly the same as the ones the girl had made. And so the notes began to arrive again. Notes from people who had made cakes from the girl's recipes but who had not been able to reproduce the same lightness of sponge or creaminess of buttercream. To begin with the girl wrote back with suggestions and tips and tried her very hardest to help the people reproduce her cakes. She found that some people had used margarine instead of butter or stirred with a metal spoon instead of wooden and yet had still expected to make a cake exactly like those made by the girl.

Soon the postman was arriving with mail each day from people who wrote things like 'these cannot be the recipes that you use, you have lied to us'; 'this recipe is too complicated and fiddly and the results are poor'; 'I don't see how you can get decent cakes from this recipe' and other unjust and hurtful things. Because, as the girl knew from experience, people can sometimes be that way when they do not get what they want.

The girl returned to her baking, but the simple joy that she had once felt was tarnished and she no longer sang as she baked. What remaining pleasure there was in her baking slowly ebbed away with the arrival of each new note, until finally none remained at all and the girl put away her apron, never to bake another morsel for the rest of her life.

Of course this is just a story, but I can't help thinking that if only the girl had just stuck with the baking that she was good at and that brought peace to her heart well, then this story could have had a happier ending. Perhaps not for everyone who didn't manage to buy a cake from the girl, but in my experience not many people get everything that they want in life.

 ;)