When I started practicing yoga, I was taken by the teacher saying to do asanas with the intention of [insert the full correct position: grabbing your toe, wrapping your arm fully around your back, whatever].
Love that, the idea that you can be successfully doing something, not because you have the perfect outcome, but because you are doing it with the outcome in mind, to the best of your ability and with full meaning. So useful an idea in this life. (Also useful in parenting teenagers. But that is another post.)
So I knit my square with intention. I didn't think it was any great shakes. Looked OK, love using my Noro yarn scraps, awfully glad for the final row of pickups and that last garter, (neither my favorite maneuvers). Off I swung by the Thursday nite shoreline SnB at a local coffeeshop.
Well. That's when I got it. We flopped down my pleasant-enough square with beautiful squares by three others . Right there, the power of a group knit, and its intent, just hit me. It's not about efficiency, or about collaborating for the sake of team effort. It's the handwork together, all that intention, embodied in different stitches in 10x10" squares.
Meg said she'd call me to shoot the whole thing together, she is somehow magically finding time to sew it up (she really is amazing- she has little teeny kids, a fulltime job, keeps up with the blogs & knits like nobody's bizness . And is always nice, too. ).
Wait'll you see it.
9 comments:
Nice - and I have a square in Meg's blanket, too. Malabrigo, though, I recently gave away my Noro leftovers. It's blue, though, and should go well with your square.
As MegMcG's mom, I'd have to agree that she really is pretty amazing, but then she always has been.
Noro colors just knock me out. Your square is lovely...quite respectable!
Thank you Gale, for your kind words. This is truly a team effort of positivity and "good juju" as Laura would say.
And thank you for giving my mother a reason to embarrass me, it brings her such joy ;)
Oh, Mary Lou, its Malabrigo! I wondered what it was. In all honestly, I'm leaving your square on the edge, in the middle, figuring it would be extra soft for a child to have near his/her face. Just lovely.
Perhaps I should knit myself a Malabrigo afghan....hmmm...
Exactly, Gale--exactly what I've been thinking about this square-knitting business. It doesn't even make sense when you describe what you're doing to somebody who doesn't knit. But all that intention, all that thinking, is a powerful thing.
Noro seems perfectly suited to this kind of knitting. It adds to the hypnotic part. Can't wait to see this blankie.
And yes, Meg is such a supermensch!
Intention. I like that.
Will give this more thought...
intention in knitting is always a good thing
How could you be so dispassionate about that square? It's Noro. It's log cabin. Photo by Zucker. Full intention achieved.
Noro! Malabrigo! They'll go nuts in San Fran!
Thanks my friend. I am giggling, but just a little, at the idea of knitting happening in the name of a man who didn't know quite what knitting was, exactly.
love, Kay
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