Handiwork

CO 200
1-6,K1 P1 around
7 – *K1, YO, K3, Sl1 K2, PSSO, K3, YO; rep from * to BOR
8 and all even– K around
9 – K2, *YO, K2, Sl1 K2, PSSO, K2, YO, K3; rep from * to BOR

This looks like another language at first. It’s confusing, and frustrating. I want to give up, but I’m determined to figure this out. In the beginning, the stitches go onto the needle so tightly that I can barely pass the other needle through the loop. I have to use force to pull the stitches off the needle, and I’ve managed to bend this once perfectly straight stainless steel needle to an awkward angle. I need to pay attention to every single movement – or I could drop a stitch. I could ruin everything. And if I mess up – I might as well start over or give up – because I don’t know how to fix my mistakes.

As I learn and grow, the language becomes something I understand without thinking. I knit, purl, count. Yarn slides off the needle seamlessly. I can multitask. I know what each stitch should feel like as it goes onto and falls off the needle – even without looking. I can tell when I’ve made a mistake and usually know how to fix it. I know when it’s necessary to go back, undoing stitches to redo stitches. I know when to just let the mistakes be, and when I need to fudge a pattern a bit to make things work. After all, most people won’t be able to tell that there is a mistake there, and there, and there. I know how to undo my work for bigger mistakes, carefully unraveling the yarn, row after row. And sometimes, I can just rework a few stitches across several rows down the work. I understand how the yarn twists and loops into knits and purls in such a way that means I don’t always have to undo rows and rows and hours and hours of knitting to fix some mistakes.

I wrap yarn around the needle, pull it through loops on another needle, twist the yarn to make one stitch into two, or two stitches into one. As I manipulate the yarn into loops, they build on each other, twisting, turning, around and back and forth. Pieces of yarn slip through loops, and twists. Slowly but surely all the loops and twists become something. One strand of yarn – hundreds of yards long, begins to take shape – a cowl, a scarf, a sweater, a blanket.

As I marvel at the miracle of twisted yarn becoming something, I can’t help but think about God’s creation. Every piece of creation is twisted together into plies, twisted again into yarn, and then twisted and looped together. One stitch being dropped off the needles will impact the whole thing. We all start out listening to stories from the Bible, thinking they sound like something from a foreign language, but as time goes on, we become more familiar with the stories, we don’t feel like we must pay attention to every move. We begin to understand that there are some mistakes we can let go of, we don’t need to give up or start over completely. We start to figure out that like a knitted garment, we are like yarn, our stories are all twisted together into one creation. The things that were mistakes in the beginning – all the dropped stitches, accidental yarn overs, and knitting too many stitches together are elements used to create beautiful lace. Error becomes beauty when touched by the fingers of grace, for we are God’s handiwork.