Mindful knitting

The thing I often love the most about knitting is finding those knitting projects that I can work on while watching TV/movies or talking to others. The projects are generally referred to in the knitting world as mindless knitting, mostly because the pattern isn't mentally stimulating, the project is pretty big and the knitter just wants it to be over so they can ooh and ahh over the wonderful job that they did or they're working desperately on a deadline because someone's birthday or other special event is coming up shortly and they need to be finished asap.

But where the biggest rewards in knitting lay is in the mindful process of knitting for someone with your best intentions in mind. Love twisted into the yarn of every stitch as you think fondly of the person and all the wonderful memories you have of that person or in the case of knitting that has no intended home yet, the love and prayers for health, happiness and peace that you would wish upon those dearest to you. That is what you find in prayer shawls/blankets. Honestly any knitting project can have prayer tossed onto the front of its name, if that is what you did while making it.

My first prayer shawl was a project intentionally chosen after the passing away of a family friend, I very much wanted to give some comfort to his widow, but from over a thousand miles away just a card seemed impersonal. I found yarn that reminded me of his sparkling blue eyes that always had a hint of merriment and mischief to them and I found a shawl pattern using the trinity stitch and I knit and prayed and remembered all the times spent with them and I cried and I squished every bit of love I could into that shawl. I sent it to my mom to deliver, again because it seemed to impersonal to just mail it. And she explained as best she could, but when I was up visiting my parents next, Mom suggested that I go over to visit so that maybe I could explain it better. And I'm so glad that I did. We laughed, we cried, and she told me how thankful she was that I made that for her, because she felt less alone with it around her and it helped keep her warm that first winter without him. I thought when I knit that I was giving her a gift from my heart, but it was a gift to both of us.

My next prayer shawl I started simply because I wanted to have one available if the need should arise for one to be gifted to someone I knew. It sat around on a shelf for a while, until someone asked for a prayer request for a woman who has suddenly lost her husband. She was a mom and my heart went out to her, as well as my shawl, which I heard later she was so grateful for and used while rocking her child to sleep. I did not know this woman and will never meet her, but through that shawl we have both made a lasting impact upon each other.

I made another not long after that which found a home unexpectedly with a woman dear to me who lost her unborn child. It was the hug I wanted to give her but could not because of the distance and even now, it is a hug whenever she needs one. I smile every time I see it in her living room.

The next one was a blanket for the only man who was any kind of a father to his son's best friend. This man fought a valiant battle with cancer but in the end, the cancer won and the blanket went to his son and serves as a continuing comfort to him and his family. A reminder not only of a great man, but the thoughtfulness of a friend of a friend.

The most difficult thing to find in times of hardship and sorrow is finding the right words to help make things better. I have found in those times while words often fail me, my knitting speaks eloquently. Not only are those I knit for comforted by focusing my thoughts and prayers for them into my knitting, but I am deeply and profoundly blessed as well.

These stories continue to warm my heart, reduce me to tears, and keep me knitting with health, love, and peace in my thoughts and hands. If I'm knitting something for someone else, you can bet that no matter what I'm knitting, there are wishes of the very best of all things in the world in each and every stitch.