Knit Stars | September 13, 2026
🧶Blue jays and acorns
BY SHELLEY BRANDER
In the past few newsletters, I’ve been talking about fears that have held me back at certain times in my life. Bridges, heights, flying, even using the “good yarn.”
But there’s one more fear I haven’t talked about. It’s the one I’ve had the longest, and it’s maybe the most embarrassing one. I’ll just come out and say it:
Birds.
I’ve been scared of birds for as long as I can remember. My mom likes to tell the story of when I was very young, maybe 3 or 4, and I would see birds gathering in our backyard and run outside screaming “CAW! CAWWW!” at them like a crow, to scare them away.
“I’ll scare you before you can scare me,” I guess, was the logic in my little toddler brain.
After I moved to Florida, this fear lessened slightly as I learned to appreciate the beauty of the ospreys that perched in their nest at the end of the pier, and swooped through the sunsets outside my door during the year I lived on the intercoastal waterway.
And once, I looked up from cooking dinner and saw an uninvited guest had wandered across the threshold.
Then, when I moved to the Gulf and I would go walking on the beach, there was a positively prehistoric-looking – and most likely pregnant – pelican just sitting on the beach, staring at us as we walked past (I had to resist the urge to yell CAW, CAWWW at it 🤣).
And one bird I’ve remained especially wary of is the blue jay. There were lots of them in Tulsa, and they always seemed like the bully of the bird world, squawking and swooping if you got too close to their nest, and hogging all the food in the bird feeders.
Then recently, I learned something really cool about the blue jay.
Did you know that an industrious jay can hide 3,000 to 5,000 acorns in a single season, up to 3 miles away? Did you know that they forget to go back and get some of those acorns, which in turn sprout into tomorrow’s oak trees? In fact, they can colonize an entire oak forest in their lifetime.
And guess what? You and I are both like blue jays in this way.
We are planting acorns all the time, every day.
That smile you gave someone in the grocery line.
That car you let merge in front of you.
That blanket you crocheted that a child snuggles up with every night.
That hat you knit that warms the head of an unhoused person.
We will never know the impact of many of those acorns. But recently, I asked our readers how Knit Stars has impacted them. And I got to see a few of the “acorns” that have grown into the most amazing oak trees…
“I love owning my Knit Stars because I refer to them frequently. Now I seem to be the one that can fix everyone’s problems in my knitting group! It made me the star! ⭐️” – Debra
“Because of you and Knit Stars I have gained confidence in myself. I am now knitting fearlessly with joy and I transfer what I’ve learned from knitting into my everyday life.” – Nathalie
“I have all the classes and they have helped me to believe that I am a creative person, and that I want to contribute instead of just consume and take from the world.” – Arlene
Thank you to everyone who replied to that question. And thank you for all of the acorns you’re spreading, every day. They make a difference. 💕
xoxo,
