Nana Knits and Jams: Mindless Mitts

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Mindless Mitts

It is the dulling season, and I feel things slowing, hibernating in a variety of ways. The cold wave upon us (-3 degrees on the thermometer this morning) imprisons us because even a few minutes outside is too much. Exercise feels unattainable and my urge to stir up a batch of chocolate chip cookies wars with the dismay I feel over a scale inching upward. Obviously, I am cocooning...

Apparently that sense of sluggishness manifests itself in the focus of my knitting this week. I have been working on easy, mindless projects—using comfortable and quick patterns to work through small skeins of Morehouse Farm Merino purchased for Barbara and Alex’s Christmas mittens. I haven’t felt the urge to tackle a bigger project, although a lovely bag of Debbie Bliss Aran Tweed beckons me to begin Alexander’s birthday vest. It is time to jump start my metabolism, physically, emotionally, and spiritually…

1 comment:

Barbara Campbell ThomasJanuary 17, 2009 at 11:31 AM
These look great!!
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Quotes that resonate

"From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein." -Frederick Buechner

" If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must work for it." -John Ruskin

"All my scattering moments are taken up with my needle."-Ellen Birdseye Wheaton, 1851

"Prayer is sitting in silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, praising God until we are a constant act of praise." -Fr. Richard Rohr

"Poetry has a way of teaching one what one needs to know . . . if one is honest."  -May Sarton

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there." -Rumi

"Traveler, there is no path. Paths are made by walking." -Antonio Machado

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"I have often maintained that the best poet is ... the baker who ... does [the] majestic and unpretentious work of kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colours and handing us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship."- Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet and 1971 Nobel Laureate in Literature (1904-1973)

"Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy." -Proverbs 31: 8-9

"Let the beauty you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth." –Rumi

"The things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us the grace to labor for. "–Sir Thomas More, 16th century martyr

"To be useful was the best thing the old men ever hoped for themselves, and to be aimless was their worst fear." -Marilynne Robinson, "Gilead."