I am working on two colorwork projects. One is a complex Fair Isle sweater that changes yarn almost every row. Each round has over two hundred stitches but just as it starts to get tedious, I get to change yarns for the next row. The yarn and the colors are breath taking. The beginnings of the rows are a shamble.
The second colorwork project is a shawl by Stephen West. I’m not a shawl knitter but I received a thirty-day lockdown box from my local yarn store, Sticks and Cups in Utrecht, Netherlands with the painting brick shawl pattern enclosed. This was such a wonderful idea. The lockdown box was like an advent calendar. There were thirty wrapped packages of yarn skeins. I opened one a day for thirty days. Some of the packages contained small pieces of chocolate! I could have used the yarn for something else, but I decided to try the shawl. I had to YouTube how to do the cast-on and then another YouTube appeared with the “Weavin’ Stephen method of weaving in ends as you knit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz292NAjH2M
Relationships are like loose ends. Some we address as we go and some, we leave dangling in the past. Lent is an excellent time to go back and look at the loose ends we have left behind. It’s never too late to reach out and reconnect.
A woman I knew was having a tough time, but I found her really difficult to be around. Her belief system was contrary to mine and she was very vocal about it. This past year was very stressful, and I felt like I needed to isolate myself from this type of conflict. I limited my contact with her and gradually retreated into the background. She noticed and sent me a message. I had dropped her like the new piece of yarn at the beginning of the row and now the stich was unraveling and there was a hole in the sweater.
It turns out our love for each other was stronger than our perceived differences. We reconnected and I wove her back into the fabric of my life.
I learned that even with the “Weavin’ Stephen” method, it’s not always possible to weave ends in as I knit, but it is always possible to go back and weave them in later. As long as we have breath in our bodies, it is never too late.
4 Rows stockinette stitch and 4 rows seed stitch
Contemplative Knitting 
I imagine we all have loose ends. I cannot think of any outstanding ones having to do with relationships but perhaps I am not thinking hard enough. However, 2 years ago a very good friend from college who I had not seen in over 30 years called me on my birthday and we had the best time catching up. That reconnection turned into a reunion with her and 5 other college sorority sisters at our Almamater. They got to meet my husband and I met theirs. We got to share over a 30 year gap and felt renewed by the experience. We started by using Facetime to chat and over the past year we have a Zoom chat every couple of months. We live all over the United States and are adding other sisters to our group. In between chats we have a text thread on our phones where we check in on each other regularly. The reweaving of this thread of friendship has been and continues to be a most rewarding experience.
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