Osborn Fiber Studio

I’m back! C’mon, you knew I couldn’t stay away for that long.

On Tuesday of this week, Trinity (our school, if you haven’t picked that up) gave us all off classes to go on a Quiet Day retreat. Basically, we all met at a Salvation Army camp an hour away for a day of prayer interspersed with times of silence. Our world is full of noise, hurry, and crowds, and I am as susceptible as anyone else to succumb to them, letting them drown out the still, small voice of the Spirit. It was so helpful to spend a day away from all the motion and commotion to purposefully meditate on the Beatitudes.

Bethany’s shawl might actually help me discipline myself to take some of that time. Normally, I knit in order to multitask – knitting makes typically one-at-a-time tasks (like class, watching TV, car rides, waiting for stuff) into extra-productive time. But this project is utterly defying that habit. The pattern has details that are actually too complicated to memorize, so I have to carry the pattern with me and check it almost every row. The counts are irregular, so I really have to look at it almost all the time I am working on it, and I can’t even focus on it when I’m having a conversation on the phone. And the yarn is so fine and delicate that I have to keep my hands very stable – meaning I can’t even work on it in the car! It makes me stop – turn off the sounds, put down the book, stop moving around… and just knit.

I got through the second repeat, so you can see one full lily-of-the-valley shape just starting to come out. It’ll be clearer when I get further.

You’ll be pleased to note that I didn’t knit all day, either. Even knitting is motion… and in order to really have quiet, stillness, and solitude, I had to put even that down for a while. But I also wasn’t the only one who thought knitting was an appropriate Quiet Day activity.

Susanah the head librarian was working on something cute… a baby blanket maybe? We were supposed to be quiet, so I didn’t ask!