I am paraphrasing the title of a poem (“When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple”) penned by Jenny Joseph in 1961 when she herself was just 30.

In the poem, her younger self looks forward to he day that she is old and able to leave behind the societal constraints of her youth and to become, presumably, her truer self.

I was reminded of all of this recently when I was at twitter, and I saw this tweet:

which had been written in response to this tweet:

which prompted me to write this tweet:

The next day, I decided that while a snood might be a bit much, the idea of a “crochet bun cover” seemed like a good one.

Using a free snood pattern I found at Ravelry, which I then adapted, I made myself a magenta bun cover.

Next, I tracked down a sock bun video tutorial at youtube and with that and one of my husband’s socks, I pulled my not-quite-as-long-as-it-needs-to-be hair into a ponytail on top of my head, and then did the best I could to follow the example I had seen. As soon as my arms got tired, I covered the bun with my newly crochet magenta bun cover and voila! I was ready to be someone’s grandma:

Done with my crochet as social commentary for the day, I got back to making more squares for my “Sunshine and Shadow” project. Since I last worked on it, I had found the missing purple yarn, and was able to make a few purple squares in addition to the red, orange, green, and blue.

Here is how far I was as of this afternoon:

While I have yet to find the yellow yarn, I am making progress on both the blanket and the yarn annex, and my hope is that I am able to celebrate the Fourth of July by crochet squares in all the colors of the rainbow.