I finished knitting my summer cardigan and it’s blocked and has even been worn once in public! I used the pattern, Vertex Cardigan, from the Interweave Knit Spring 2012 magazine. The yarn is called “Waterlilies” and is produced by Madelintosh. I loved the name of the yarn, and have named my sweater after it. It does remind me of a Monet painting, with its subdued tones of green, mauve, and taupe. This pattern was overall a delight to knit and most of it went really fast. I had problems with the first sleeve because I had to pick up the stitches around the armholes and do shaping. I was also trying to adapt the sleeve to a smaller size, without much success. It was at this point I hit the major snag of the project, and there were several episodes of knitting lots of rows and then having to rip them out because they were wrong. After the third iteration of “knit and rip” I started to get very frustrated, not so much because of the mistakes, but because all my work had evaporated into a wad of yarn and I had nothing to show for it. I felt like I had wasted hours of my life in a completely irresponsible way and had no proof that I had diligently labored for several days on that sleeve. Later that night as I put away the project God started to work on my heart about my attitude. As I considered the situation, He showed me all the ways that I had learned about sleeve construction, how to fix mistakes, how to properly read the instructions, and how to be patient. Even though I didn’t have any completed rows, I had actually learned a great deal through my mistakes. And I was able to use what I’d learned to complete both sleeves without further problem.
This was a great reminder to me that in God’s economy nothing is ever wasted. He uses all our tears and laughter, our mistakes, our misfortunes and good fortunes, hard times and easy times… all things He is knitting together into a beautiful expression of His grace.
Blessings to you,
Sarah
anordinarymiracleday 