Rosary of Yarn

I embarked on my third afghan venture on Saturday after two glorious hours lost in the craft store. Every time I visit, I enter with peaceful anticipation, peruse the colorful yarns and fabrics in wistfulness or indecision, and exit drowning in creative juices.

After a brief hiatus of recovery from my last afghan, I was ready to take another one on. With every project I do, I try to learn a new stitch or pattern, and granny squares have been on my list ever since I started crocheting. Being the nerd that I am, my brain soon jumped to the mathematical possibilities involved in setting a goal for completion. I knew I wanted to finish it by summer, when my job would get busy, fast. So I worked it out:

72 days (12 weeks, six days a week)
181 granny squares
= about 2.5 squares a day

Finishing what I started has never been difficult for me; I’ve always been a self-motivated perfectionist, so the prospect of this neat calculation, while satisfying, held no particular challenge. And then, it occurred to me: what if I put the same kind of time, effort, enthusiasm, and persistence into my prayer life as I did into a mere hobby? Here was an area in which I could benefit from some discipline and perseverance; this could make something mindless, meaningful.

Handmade afghans are heirlooms, and there is something special about the thought of every square representing time spent in a conversation with the Lord, representing the pieces of my life brought before Him. In this way, I could weave a memory rather than just an antique.

This is the beginning of my rosary of yarn, the story of my prayers and squares.