The Enormous Knitting Project

Last winter I bought a pair of wooden circular knitting needles and decided to make something enormous. A blanket is a pretty large project, so I bought two skeins of wool yarn and began with double threads. It would be double thick, double warm, and double enormous!

I didn't even count how many stitches I stuffed on the little needles- when it looked big, I started on the second row.

For weeks I worked and progressed. It took a full half hour to knit from one side to the other. My hands were always occupied when a friend came over, and during family meetings, and especially during movies: an 'I Love Lucy' was once across my project, a feature was three or four times across. Slowly, it grew by centimeters and inches. Every week or more I went to Michaels with a coupon for yarn.

When it became enormous I went to Hawaii for three months, and when I came back I had fallen out of the knitting mood so it laid in my closet for months- a 1 yard by over 3 yard enormous heap.

Today, I unraveled it.

Unraveling it was a sizable project by itself!

I turned a chair upside-down and wound the yarn around the four legs. It took a long time, and my arms were stiff and sore when I was done. Then I wound it into a ball.

Now I hope to knit a blanket with it, instead of a rectangle.

I'm a visual girl: I write and express how I perceive things, like describing pictures in my head about life.

I think our lives are like an enormous knitting project. We grow by centimeters and inches, investing small measures of time and attention in the material we choose to use and become.

A holy life is like pure wool- double thick in wisdom and rich experience, double warm in acceptance and empathy, and double enormous in being a blessing!

Our lives are constantly progressing with friends, family times, meals, movies, resting, reading, working, learning, processing, talking, etc. and when our lives are done, they are oddly shaped by thousands of 'stitches' of varied occurrences.

One day God will unravel the mystery of our lives. He will undo us, running the turquoise and maroon threads of sadness and joys through his fingers, touching us in every minute of our past and assuring us that his hands were always around us as we hurt and laughed and re-worked mistakes and grew. He knit us together in the womb, fitting our tiny parts in place, and he has plans for our seemingly normal lives to exploding with invisible power and potential. The knitting needles are his tools, and he will employ people, conversations, events and experiences to fashions us perfectly if we will let him.

13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb. 14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous -- and how well I know it. 15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. 17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God! They are innumerable! 18 I can't even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up in the morning, you are still with me! ~ Psalm 13