The Best of a Mess. Prayer Shawl

wristers

Prayer Shawl

Some things are just too hard. Like knitting a sock.  I have spent hours with four metal sticks and some baby fine wool making little knots and loops to create a pair of socks.  Maybe it is the light so I have adjusted the goose neck lamp. Or could it be my progressive lens glasses?  I have cleaned them thirteen-umpty times. What to do? Frog the sock and start over? Call it quits and admit I am too old, too blind, too arthritic to knit a sock? How useful would bulky knit socks on large needles be?  At least I could see them and make them, my fingers would not cramp so much with the larger needles.  What is the point?  I should be enjoying this.  Decision made I am not going to give up on socks.  They will be a work in progress....and put away for a while in the stash bin. I will try wristers in fine wool and tiny needles first. At least no heal to turn. They will stand a chance of getting finished. I feel more determined with this decision and I really want my own pair of delicate wristers for semi chilly Florida weather.
So back to difficult situations and knitting.
My son is on a liver transplant list.  He has been fighting his disease  for over 2 decades now and yet he is so young. Thirty-four. Not fun, unfair, sad beyond words.  I weep. I pray. I put it out of my mind. I can't get it out of my mind. It becomes my mind. I have no mind. I am finding the point. I am missing the point. He is better. He is worse. Dr's are miracle workers. Dr's know nothing. Prayer helps, Prayer frustrates me. I can't pray, all I do is pray.  I am on my knees. I am mad. I am handing it over...no I am taking it back.  I am a mother.

Ross at 24

I am knitting my way to the city of oblivion. Along the way I make some nice things. I make messes. I solve some problems. I frog my knitting. I become a yarn snob. No I will use any yarn...just keep busy knitting. I use yarn I got at Goodwill. Acrylic. No I need to use pure wool. Wool so natural the lanolin faint on my fingers.  I need the connection to life to real wool. Sheep. Silly sheep in the fields.  Chewing their way to the earth to get every taste of green grass. Sheep are such good lawnmowers.
I grew up with sheep. My brother Ross raised sheep. My mother's oldest son and he died so young at twenty-four.  My oldest son trying so hard not to die young.
Sheep, wool, knitting, mothers, children, prayer, projects, desire, love, things that fill my life and clutter my mind.  I am doing my best in this mess. My best is not enough.  The wool is lying slack in my hands with metal needles all akimbo. My son in a hospital.  My son on a list. Far away in the north. My prayers sent into the abyss.
I picked up the Acrylic yarn from Goodwill and began to make a prayer shawl. K3P3, and the opposite on the returns.  Father, Son, Holy Ghost. The Best of a Mess. Prayer.

Pray