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Dusk settled over the quiet highway parking lot, when a red pick-up truck pulled up next to me. I threw my backpack in the back and climbed in, nodding at the two guys sitting in the front. The older greeted me with a cheerful “Hi, I’m John and that’s Jonny.”, while pointing a thumb over at the passenger seat. Jonny was a backpacker from Ireland and currently working on John & Sue’s farm in exchange for food and accommodation. I was his replacement. This was part of my plan to travel across Canada on a budget. John & Sue’s farm lay outside of the small town of Lindsay, Ontario and they shared it with their dogs, chickens, ducks, sheep, a donkey and an alpaca. They sold homemade goods and animal products at local farmers markets. For the next few weeks I helped with collecting eggs from flappy chickens, feeding the animals and weeding the garden. Sue cooked delicious meat pies for the markets in her homely country kitchen while I made a mess with the flour, baking cookies for humans (and dogs) and wrapping them in little plastic bags for sale. One day I found myself plucking dirt and grass out of some freshly sheared sheep wool. Sue wanted to spin it and in the evening we sat around her big wooden spinning wheel in the living room. Her confident fingers were quick at work, her muscle memory taking over as she fed the wool into the wheel at a steady pace. Her foot was pedalling the wheel in a constant rhythm. The bushy wool turned into a golden shimmering yarn. Fascinated by the simple task I was ready to take a turn. Clumsily I tried to feed the wool in while trying to pedal steadily as well. The soft flowing rhythm quickly turned into a rollercoaster ride. My fingers weren’t fast enough and the wool either came in lumps creating big knots in the yarn or it became too thin and snapped off. Sue patiently reconnected my yarn many times till my fingers eventually found their own pace, leaving my fingertips greasy from the lanolin residue in the sheep wool. The result was a unique batch of yarn looking like a snake that had swallowed one egg after another. The next day we coloured it a deep purple shade and at the end Sue gave me my first own produced batch of yarn saying I should use it for something special. It travelled with me to my next destination, the Jasper National Park, where I got a summer job in a town bakery to boost my budget. Between the bakery and my accommodation was a small yarn shop on the corner of the street, where I met Tracey. Tracey was willing to teach me how to knit a hat out of my yarn. Quickly, I settled into the routine of stopping by the shop, after making coffees and serving bear paws, a unique local sweet treat, to tourists and natives alike. Sitting on a stool in the corner by the till, I watched many ladies coming into the shop picking their ways through the piles of yarn and quilt patches while gleefully exchanging practical tips with each other. Tracey was another patient teacher and took her time between her customers to explain me how to knit a hat with four needles – as if two wasn’t hard enough – and to correct my many mistakes. From the shop I usually walked home during the warm summer evenings soaking in the slow sun sets over the surrounding mountain range. Eventually my hat was finished, slightly too big, but cutely decorated with dots of wool on the side. To this day I like my perfectly imperfect travelling hat, not only for its fashion statement but for the memory of people I met creating it and the skills they taught me. My summer job came to an end and I took a last hike through the woods at the back side of Jasper to Patricia and Pyramid Lake, which lay quietly glistering in the sun inviting for a rest and refreshing foot bath. The next day I left Jasper, but I took a piece with me.