My fingers and thumb shift the yarn over and around to pull a new stitch on to another needle. The yarn is soft and warm, inviting a new shape to emerge. Since Thanksgiving I have been knitting day and night. I have to make myself sit sometimes without the newest project in my hands and lap.
I used to knit, back when I was a young girl and teen, making white angora hats that tied under the chin for my friends. At twelve I made my first cardigan sweater, a green that was a favorite color of mine until my father called it army green and said it was the ugliest color ever.
But somewhere along the way, I stopped knitting. Perhaps I had no time for it with studies and activities of high school and college. I made my husband an afghan the first year we met and crocheted a couple of afghans later for our sons. But years have passed since I knitted anything at all.
Since late fall, knitting is a new meditation and spiritual practice. I have made a dozen pairs of fingerless gloves for friends and family and nearly a dozen pairs for children. Recently I decide I want to create something bigger, so I check the sizes of needles I have tucked away in my grandmothers’ knitting basket and find a scrap piece of paper that says, “Prayer Shawl. Knit 3 Purl 3 for 57 stitches, then turn and Purl 3, Knit 3 for the next row. Continue for five feet. “ A minister friend giving me the pattern when we were on a Shalem residency in Spiritual Direction. I plan to attempt that pattern and head to Michael’s to buy yarn.
I find a soft warm yarn in blue green and start on the project as soon as I arrive home. After I complete a few inches, I examine my work to be sure the stitches line up correctly for the pattern. Then I realize what I have done.
In 2003 when my friend, Carlton died, his wife offered me the prayer shawl that had been made for him by a church group. He was the first person with whom I had long spiritual dialogues. I treasure the shawl and use it nearly every day when I am reading, writing or sitting. It wraps me for naps and comforts me when I have lost my way. Nearly every time I sit with it, I examine the stitches to determine if it is crocheted or knitted and how to make it. I have never figured it out. Until now.
The prayer shawl that I have just begun making is the same pattern as Carlton’s. I imagine Knit 3 Purl 3 being significant for Episcopalians: The Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One has to pay attention to keep the pattern aligned, especially with a nubby yarn. I say, “I love you”over and over as I knit the shawl and trust that Spirit will hear my prayers for all those I think of as I add row after row. It took nine years for me to find the prayer shawl pattern I wanted, and yet, it was there all along.
