Many, many (many, many, many, many) years ago, when Teresita Rosita was but a mere spark in her creator’s imagination, there was a panda hat. This panda hat was coveted by the creator. Not for it’s power giving properties. Not for it’s protectiveness. Not for increased stamina, resistance or fortitude.

No.

It was coveted because…

It was cute.

It was the cutest darned thing the creator had ever seen and by golly she was going to have it!

Oh, I failed to mention this was all in a game. An online game where you drive around in little trucks and shot other players. It was a silly game. An addictive silly game. And it was a silly hat, so all in all it made sense to want it. And boy did she want it. But she refused to pay money for a silly hat in a silly online game, no matter how much her heart longed to have it.

And then someone near and dear to the creator bought her the hat and she was infinitely happy and played the game even more than she was already (which was a lot, trust me).

And so the seed had been planted. The tiny panda-hat-seed that would germinate for years. Growing bigger and bigger inside the creator’s head until finally, a sprout emerged.

That little tendril entered the world as Teresita Rosita Travels, a blog about a girl and her panda hat taking on the world (well, Latin America) and getting up to all sorts of mischief. Teresita Rosita was there because she wanted to see the world, meet new people and maybe discover herself along the way. The panda hat was there because everyone knows that pandas never get lost (whoever told the Teresita Rosita that may have lied, but we’ll never know because if she did get lost, she still ended up precisely where she was meant to be).

Unfortunately, all journeys must come to an end. Teresita Rosita returned home to Australia, poorer in money but oh, so much richer in life.

She settled down. Got a job. And then another one. And then another one. She kept that one.

She got a man. And then an-

I digress… Let’s just say she eventually found a man. And they got a cat. And then Teresita Rosita reappeared into the wider world. This time she was back as part of The 100 Day Project. The 100 Days of Teresita Rosita.

She came back every single day for those one hundred days. Always with her trusty panda hat. It had changed, but so had she. And it continued to change. Those first one hundred days were about experimentation. Different styles, shapes, sizes, but always with that hat firmly planted on her noggin.

Teresita Rosita evolved and so did her panda hat. The 100 Day Project ended and Teresita Rosita faded back into the woodwork of everyday life for a while.

But nothing could hold her down for too long.

Years passed and that little sprout grew into a tree that bore tiny panda hatted fruit. Another 100 Day Project began. And ended. And Teresita Rosita kept appearing. Every day. For 365 days. And then she still kept going. She was loose on the world and nothing could stop her now. There she was with that faithful panda hat keeping her brain warm and smooshing her fringe down.

In some ways it’s a chicken/egg scenario. What came first - Teresita Rosita or her panda hat? What we do know now is that, to quote the insightful words of Louis Jorden, they go together like cornbread and beans, like strawberry and shortcake, like hot cake and molasses.

The girl and her panda hat were inseparable (except for haircuts, that would be a bit weird really).