Abundance

"Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance."
- John Petit-Senn

Sometimes, it only takes a sentence to improve our outlook on life. I think the one I quoted above is a doozy.

It is an interesting holiday season this year.

REVELATION BY TYPO ALERT: I accidentally typed holidazy. Actually, I think that is a pretty fair description. I just might have to keep using that...

Anyway, as I was saying...

This year:

As the no-longer-looming-but-already-painfully-here recession deepens and the sobering news is interspersed with cheerful advertising...

As my email box fills up with desperate emails entreating me to spend, spend, spend...

As my mail carrier groans with the added weight of all the glossy catalogs ordered by retailers in happier times...

As my desire to indulge my family wars with my fear of impending lay-offs...

I find myself, even more than usual, contemplating what it takes to make us happy.

I will confess to having barely started my Christmas shopping. I have looked, but not yet bought, as I watch my bank balance creep up into enough to fund a modest shopping trip.

Hey, you try earning your keep in increments of $8 or less! It takes a lot of pattern sales to buy a sweater...

So I electronically shuttle from PayPal to Online Banking to Old Navy to Fisher Price (now there's a company I haven't patronized for a l-o-o-o-o-n-g time!) to Gap to Williams Sonoma.

At least I don't have to find a parking place. And I can play MY music while I shop.

With a cat in my lap.

And a mug of hot coffee.

But, no matter how serene the surroundings, there is still a creative tension between want, need, the willingness to go into debt, and the ability to pay.

I think to myself, "There just isn't enough!"

And then I read a sentence like the one that leads off this post.

And I humbly beg forgiveness for my foolishness.

I am a knitter. I am a designer. I am a writer. I am a mother. I am a grandmother. I am a wife.

I am a seeker of truth, a child of God.

And I enjoy each and every one of these things. Together they add up to a magnificent abundance.

Sometimes, all it takes is a sentence...

*****

Here are some pictures of my knitting abundance, but first a word (Well, several actually; why use one when a dozen would suffice?) about those eight charts I spoke of yesterday.

I did eight charts, so you won't have to.

I was tired of knitting and ripping out rows. I was unhappy with the balance of the patterns in Rouen. So I charted the whole thing out, including repeats, reduced the size of the graphs and lined them up on the page so I could get an overall picture.

And it worked.


I have added the next element to the foundation of the border I shared with you yesterday:

A secondary border, with vertical ribbing and architectural details.


The color is very pretty; rather an opalescent gray, with bits of pink and blue. Appropriate, I think to a piece that was inspired by the incomparable Monet and his paintings of Rouen.

And now, I am ready to move onward and upward to the soaring heights my creative soul can reach. I have an abundance of enjoyable challenge waiting for my hand. God will provide.

It's a good thing.