Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Ju Ju

I've taken the last several days off blogging, trying to get my house tidy enough to host a house guest this weekend. My anticipated guest is a knitter, too, and isn't going to fuss if there is yarn lying about - but it would be nice if she could see the floor here and there, and maybe sit down somewhere. Obviously, something had to give, and it wasn't going to be my knitting.

Then I got caught up in the Inauguration ceremonies. Amazing, how these things get more and more interesting as one grows up - I used to be terminally bored when I had to watch current events in school, but this one ... it was magic. It was engrossing. It was captivating.

So, of course, I knit through the entire thing as I watched CNN. How other? The ceremony was made for knitting. This was change, and at the same time it was the smooth continuity of our political system. It was order out of chaos. It was bringing things together to form a new unity. I use my knitting as a personal magic spell, sometimes: I deliberately knit during special times, at special places, to catch those unique and sacred moments in my web. It ties all the days of my life together.

I think most knitters do that. When you see a knitter working away during a wedding, a christening, a funeral, a reunion - they aren't ignoring the event, they are paying the closest possible attention: they are immortalizing it. The knitting is our prayer that this event will be commemorated forever; whatever it is that has been born, may it may live forever. We knot it to the fabric of the world with our strings and sticks.

There's a prayer in every stitch, and I knit hundreds as Barack Obama took his oath as our new President. And I didn't make a single error.

Here is a needlewoman's prayer:
May this new union live, take hold and grow strong! Let our country hold together like fine fabric. Let it thrive and increase row after row. We will all hold it together.

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