Choosing the Right Yarn

Psalm 139: 13-14

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your words are wonderful, I know that full well.

I get all glazy-eyed at a craft store.  I stand amazed and awed by the vast array of colors, weights, materials, and plies of all the yarns before me.  I probably drool, too.

I am an adventurous crotcheter.  I see a fluffy chenille and think, what if I used it for a basket weave pattern?  I admire the all organic 100% cotton yarn and wonder how it would work for a summer skirt.  Sometimes it works.  Sometimes it doesn't.

Lessons I have learned from these experiments:

• chunky yarn should not be used for large projects requiring small hooks
• fuzzy yarn works better as a knitted project because crochet hooks get caught in the knaps
• Wool tugs at my heritage and makes me yearn imaginatively for fishing villages and peat fires.  However, wool really does not work well in the tropics
• when the contents state “4% other", it will shrink, stretch, fade, and/or itch
• baby yarn is fabulous – soft, gentle colors, washable -- but cannot replace chunky yarn nor vice versa in order to yield an article in the correct and expected proportions

People are like yarn.  Each has its own weight, ply, and content.  Each should be used in patterns which fit them.  The differences between yarn -- and people -- depend on their content and how they were twisted and twined.   I think I'm solid, all natural, tan cotton four ply yarn.  Probably the best pattern for my life may be to become a potholder.  People need potholders.  Potholders protect and preserve.  They are washable and always smell of sugar cookies.  If I spend my whole life trying to become a baby blanket or a chemotherapy cap, I will be useless.  Four-ply is too big for a baby blanket and cotton is not warm enough for a chemotherapy cap.

I trust God to weave me into a suitable pattern for my life.  God knows my fabric content.  He knows the appropriate use for me.  After all, He made me.

Dear Lord,

Let me not just be content with the pattern you have chosen for my life.  Let me be ecstatic about it.  Amen.