Knitters have been busy while sheltering in place. On Facebook, I’ve seen pictures of UFOs (Unfinished Objects) that have languished in drawers, closets, and the bottom of knitting bags for months or even years, completed at last. What a boost to finish a project! It can be a challenge to see a project through. Prayer shawl makers are no strangers to the elation of binding off that last stitch, attaching that last piece of the fringe, ready at last to comfort and encourage a hurting or fainting heart.
When it’s time to make another one, we often go to the yarn that folks have donated to our ministry. Most of us have a corner of church storage for the prayer shawl ministry yarn stash. Some of us even carry donated yarn around in the trunks of our cars (I wouldn’t know anything about that!). Sometimes people bring us new yarn, but more often than not, it’s the half skeins left over from other projects. It keeps us creative, coming up with ways to combine colors and patterns to make beautiful shawls with what we’re given. And sometimes, in the midst of the donated stash of a beloved mother or grandmother, we find a UFO.
Jeanie Taylor of Grace Lutheran Church in Pensacola, Florida recently wrote to me about her experience with a rather challenging UFO. In a bag of donated yarn, she found ten crocheted strips in various lengths and various shades of brown. As she wondered what to do with them, she got “The Nudge” as a still, small voice encouraged her to use them as part of a lap robe with an abstract design. It took some doing, but she made something beautiful out of scraps that someone else might have bundled into the trash.
The year 2020 so far also has us scratching our heads and wondering what to do with the pieces of life the pandemic has left us with. How do we put them together to make a new kind of life, one that is both functional and beautiful? I urge you to ask God what to do and then to listen, as Jeanie did, for the answer.
Jeanie has given me permission to publish the full account of her UFO experience, which includes the directions. Look for it on next week’s blog. In the meantime, I’d love to see and hear about how you turn the partial skeins and UFOs in your stash into warm and beautiful shawls. Email me at
sharonjmondragon@gmail.com
Thank you for this lovely idea of scraps of beauty!! We have plenty of them at our prayer shawl office. Blessings for encouraging us to use the small things to make something beautiful for others’ comfort and encouragement.
So glad I could encourage you and your prayer shawl group! I hope you’ve been able to meet via Zoom–it’s meant the world to me to keep in contact with my knitting/ministry friends!
There are so many people who will be inspired by this … to realize it’s “time!” Time to look at scraps as “previews of possibilities” – inklings of intention and creativity that can transform both yarn AND life! Also, It’s time I got to work on the unfinished prayer shawl languishing in my own basket!!
It’s going to be so soft and beautiful!