Wednesday, December 31, 2008

One Ninth


Look!  It's a knitting post!

Turns out that knitting and sermon writing have an inverse relationship, in terms of getting things accomplished... However, you can share one-ninth of a blanket and have something to talk about, whereas one-ninth of a sermon is just a bunch of words with barely a thread to hold them together yet.

These four squares are one-ninth of a log cabin blanket - thirty-two more squares to go!  It's taken me a month-ish to knit them, so we should have a blanket by about this time next year.  

How like writing, though, is this project!  You start with a center point and know that you have several different ideas with which you want to color your work, and you have to plan where the ideas will start and stop and how you'll move seamlessly from one to the other.  The piece grows around the center, at times lopsided in one direction or another, at times coming round full circle.  Then just when you think you're done, you turn it over and find all the loose ends that need to be woven in to prevent the whole thing from unraveling... 

Photo: Julie Owen

3 comments:

Julie Nolte Owen said...

I like your comparison between the log cabin knitting technique and sermon writing. I think the log cabin method can be compared to so many things in life. The intersections of colors and strips remind me of the many intersections in my life. Also, think of how similar it is to walking a labyrinth from the inside out!

Jen said...

I hadn't thought of the labyrinth, but what a perfect image for the log cabin! Even the knitting back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...each stitch a step...

Thanks for the image!

Anonymous said...

Such fun to watch them grow! Next time we're together, I'll show you a few tricks about knitting in the tails as you go...or maybe you have a friend there who can show you. Sometimes we can take care of the ragged, dangly edges of our life, er, knitting projects, as we make them, and sometimes they just seem to get out of hand! Everyone sees the outside/rightside, but we know if something is incomplete on the inside/wrongside. Knitting/life is about the fun and easy parts as well as the not-so-fun parts. Golly- you've got me started on all sorts of metaphors and images! Creation and finishing. Parts of the whole. More than the whole...the warmth and joy the blanket will bring. My mind is going to explode! I'm going back to my WIP...