Lessons from the Knitting Circle

A couple of years ago, a few of us on Main Street decided to take up knitting. Winter in Ohio can be claustrophobic and knitting seemed like a good idea for an indoor, winter activity.

We looked at a couple, YouTube videos and started in on our first project: scarves.

It was slow and tedious, but we started to catch on.  Then life got busy and our knitting got stowed away... until we met Sunny. Sunny is one of our delightful neighbors whose nick-name rightly describes her.  She's a joy.  Sunny hosts a monthly knitting circle in the neighborhood and she invited all interested Main-family knitters. I thought it would be fun and Daniel (9) said he wanted to come.

So, last Fall, we walked down the street with our long-neglected scarves in tow and joined four, lovely grandmothers for knitting, chatting and cookie eating.  It was great fun.

Daniel is a huge hit at this monthly gathering.  He's the youngest and the only boy and he has been determined to finish his scarf.  It has been a curious, little project though.  His scarf kept changing shape.   With our limited knitting abilities, neither of us were sure how he did it, but he started small, got big and then went small again.  It's as if his scarf had a mind of its own and we think it's comical. We have spent months laughing over his unpredictable creation as it slowly unveiled its unique personality.

But seriously, friends, what do you do with a scarf that looks like this?!

We decided to put it aside and start a new scarf with some lovely yarn his Lala sent...and we brought it to January's knitting circle.  

Daniel was having a tough time keeping his rows even and the matriarch of the group gave him a couple, helpful tips. Later in the evening she pointed out that the uncorrected, bad habits of his previous project have made it hard for Daniel to perfect his knitting skills. Very true.  

She went on to tell us of a young girl that was just starting out and she wasn't knitting correctly.  Our knowledgable knitter advised her young student to tear out her imperfect stitching and begin again. She tore it out and never picked up another knitting needle.  That inspired another story of an eager grandson who tried his hand at knitting, but lost interest when his grandmother secretly took apart his project and re-did it more perfectly to "help him out."

Maybe an imperfect project with a few, hard-to-break, bad habits isn't so bad. Maybe there's value in imperfect creations - in trying and persevering and learning from the beautiful rubble.  

My 9-year old has the craziest, first-born scarf I've ever seen... and he's still picking up his knitting needles.  I think that's beautiful.  

But do I think the same when it comes to life?  You know, like sending out my insecure, pre-teen into the world of peer-pressure where he daily struggles and falters and lives as an imperfect creation.  Do I see wonder in his persevering and learning from the beautiful rubble in his life? Am I willing to let him suffer through a few "uncorrected bad habits" to yield the joy of picking back up and pressing on with unique challenges as well as unique joys?  Yeah, that's a lot harder, and it's a good reflection... but I'll need to step back and think on it a bit more.

As for Daniel's scarf, we got to wondering if we could sew it, stuff it and make a pillow out of it. Why not? So, we started... 

All this time and we never saw the beauty that Daniel's crazy creation was begging to be. Friends, sometimes it's just not what we think.  Sometimes it's only in the persevering that we get to see the wonder of a thing.  Really, who knew?  

                          
                                                           

I just love it when our messes turn into beautiful things.  

(insert Gungor's song "Beautiful Things" here...)