Half smart silver, half soft cord, so it goes with everything

The boutique describes it as a slim silver-tone half cuff with three tan straps, and that is exactly it. The front half is a smooth, polished curve of silver, plain as you like, and the back half is three soft tan cords lying side by side. From one side it looks smart enough for church. Turn your wrist and it looks easy-going enough for the allotment. I have never owned anything that manages both, and I did not know I wanted to until I saw it on Freda.

Lifting the last of the beetroot. It looks as at home here as it did at the show.

The little heart is the fastening, not a fiddly clasp

This is the bit that sold it to me. There is no clasp to wrestle with. A little loop of the tan cord hooks round the silver heart, and that is it done. The boutique says it slips on and fastens in seconds, and for once I can agree with a boutique. My fingers are not what they were after fifty winters of digging, and I have given up on jewellery for less. The heart itself is plain and smooth, no writing on it, just a nice weight of polished silver tone that catches the light when you move your hand.

On my scarf on the kitchen windowsill, in the four o’clock sun. The loop goes round the heart, and that is all there is to it.

The small details are the ones people ask about

Beside the heart, the cords are knotted either side of one round silver bead covered in little daisies, darker in between so the flowers stand out. Below that hangs a short tail of cord finished with two silver balls, one big and one small. Nobody would notice any of it from across a room, but from across a show bench, they do. Two women have asked me about the daisy bead since, and one of them was Sylvia, who has never once in thirty years asked me about anything I have had on. From Sylvia, that is practically a medal.

It is light enough to forget about

The boutique calls it smooth, lightweight and comfortable enough for morning to evening, and I can vouch for that. I had it on from seven in the morning staging the shallots, through the judging, the raffle, the tea and the clearing up, and I did not touch it once. Nothing pinching, nothing digging in, nothing sliding down over my hand when I reached for a plate. Brian had to point out I still had it on when I went down the garden to lock the shed.

It sits with a jumper, or next to a watch

It looked right on the show morning with my good oatmeal jumper. On the Monday I wore it to the supermarket with a cardigan and my old quilted coat, and it looked right there too. The boutique says you can wear it on its own or layer it with other bracelets and your watch, and I wear mine on the same wrist as my watch, which I would never have done with a bangle. At night it goes in the little dish on my dressing table, where I can see it, not in a drawer where things go to be forgotten.

Where it lives, in the dish by the window, next to my gloves.

Twenty-eight designs, so there is one for everybody on your list

The Harriet is one of twenty-eight bracelets in the same collection, every one at the same price. There are ones with little chips of stone on the cord, in black and moss green and turquoise and rust, ones that wrap round the wrist in raspberry and mauve and turquoise, ones on bead cords with silver fish or a little elephant or carved daisies, and a few more cuffs like mine with a daisy or a disc in place of the heart. I am hopeless at presents for women, and a bracelet has no size to guess. I have ordered the turquoise stone chip one for my sister June for Christmas, and a second Harriet for my daughter, which is the first time in my life I have finished my Christmas presents in October.

A second Harriet, for my daughter, going into brown paper on the kitchen table.