Gift #1061: Labor of Love

Right after finishing the muffin tin challenge last Sunday, I had another, even bigger challenge in front of me.

Last year at this time our local knit shop owners were welcoming their baby girl into the world.   I was thinking of something special that our knitting group could do to celebrate her first birthday.  So I asked if there would be any interest in our group knitting squares that we could assemble into a baby blanket.  Our group was really enthusiastic about it and we all set to knitting squares for a couple of weeks.  Then I received them to seam up into a finished blanket.  I spent several days with all the squares laid out on the living room floor and moving them around until the arrangement was perfect.  Then the seaming began… and went on and on…  I was really nervous about it because I don’t have much practice seaming up blankets and I wanted to do justice to everyone’s beautiful squares.  After looking at several options, I found a method that I thought would unify all the squares together and picked a scallop edging.  It took a long time to do – virtually every minute of last week was consumed with getting the stitching finished, adding the edging, weaving in ends, and blocking the edges.

The knitting group presented it this week and it looks like our baby knitter really liked it.  I love this blanket because it represents the lives of so many ladies who have come together over a shared hobby and have found friendship and joy together.  We are like a big family – we encourage each other, help each other with projects, share wisdom and stories, and uplift each other.  It has transformed my life in ways far beyond knitting and I’m so grateful to our store for fostering this community.  Each of these squares tells a story… a special yarn, a knitting pattern, a symbol… all reflect in some way each person’s individual experience with our knit shop.  It’s a collection of unique memories.  But they all blend together to create a cohesive object of beauty far beyond the sum of its parts.  In many ways, this blanket is a symbol of our knitting shop itself – it’s the intersection of many individual lives that have been woven together over a shared passion and together we tell a story that is greater than our individual lives.  It’s a story of togetherness, of a place of belonging, of value, of creating, of beauty.   It’s a story that turns a shop into a home and once-strangers into sisters.

Blessings to you,

Sarah