Several of you asked to see a photo of the blanket I wrote about in my previous post.  Here it is.  

I have finished 35 of its 55 blocks.  Today had to pull out half of block 36 because I realized that I was not going to have enough yarn to finish it.  That is the risk when working with partial skeins.  Without doing more measuring than I am interested in, I have no way of knowing exactly how much yarn is really in a leftover ball or skein.  I have made it two-thirds of the way through this project before my guesstimating skills failed me.  I’m OK with those odds.

What started out as a mindless knitting project whose primary purpose was to get rid of miscellaneous balls of yarn, has turned out to be anything but mindless.  Rather, the process of working on the Rambling Rows Afghan has become a catalyst for much thinking about all that is going on in the world right now.

As I sat knitting one morning, the thoughts started coming fast and furiously.  I reached for a tiny notebook that sits in a small bowl of knitting notions by my chair.  This notebook is there primarily for jotting down the pattern row on which I stop so I know where to begin next time I pick up my needles.  It really is not big enough for lots of words, but it is all I had at that moment so it was going to have to handle words.  I did my best to do a brain dump of all that I was thinking, using a shorthand that I hoped would make sense to me when I returned to these words and do something with them.

When I picked up that notebook a day or two later to copy my notes, I discovered these words, which I had not noticed before, printed, not by me, on its first page:

“Welcome to knitting nirvana where needles and yarn lead to a state of peace, a state of being present, being mindful—wherever you are.   Namaste.”

This sentiment hit me like a hard whack on the head.  On June 1, I began a twenty-one day Mindfulness study.  Only a few days into that process, and here i was seeing clearly the benefits of being mindful and being present in all that I do. That day it was knitting.   I will write more about that mindfulness study in upcoming posts.

Back to the thoughts on my rambling rows afghan…

As I said in my previous post, I am using random yarns with no planned color scheme.  Side by side colors may or may not “match,” whatever that really means.  I’m not concerned about the color aesthetic.  Colors have ended up side by side that I probably would not have intentionally chosen, yet I really like them together and may actually use them in a project one day.  Here is where there serious thinking started.

What if we had the same attitude about the colors of people that I have about the color scheme of my blanket?  What if we weren’t concerned about what color people end up side by side?  Would we discover unexpected combinations that complement one another beautifully?

Rather than continue with my personal thoughts on these questions, I’m going to ask that each of you think about these  “what ifs” and spend some quiet time with them.  

I’m definitely not finished exploring the metaphor of my knitted blanket and what it has to show me about my own thoughts, attitudes, and choices surrounding color—color far beyond the fifty-five blocks of this afghan.