Honey Cowl from Cream City Yarn - Day 2

“You knit to save your life.”  Ann Hood, The Knitting Circle

Non-knitters would find this statement hyperbole, but we know better.  

There are days--weeks, months, even entire years--where the act of knitting becomes the only candle holding the darkness at bay.  Times where everything else feels too complex, too ineffectual, too demanding...and we hide behind our needles.

I have known the life-and-death moments of knitting, mostly done on cold vinyl hospital chairs and scratchy “family conference room” couches.  I have also known the less dire curveballs of life, the ones that pummel you with random frequency.  Both bring hours where I must knit, because it’s all I can do.

These are the places were the graces of texture and rhythm show their kind faces.  The softness of yarn slides between my fingers to accomplish small beauties when everything else in my day feels sharp and tangled.  

Oh, how I have loved my knitting these last few days.  I am not knitting to save my life (or someone else’s), thank goodness,  but our family is facing yet another medical challenge, and I am knitting to find my footing.  Again.  Weaving the three-ply strand of yarn and prayer and the tiniest of accomplishments so that row by row, peace is restored.

I know you know what I mean.