A Yarn Metaphor

I spent nine hours this weekend untangling a skein of yarn. While trying to wind it into a nice ball, so I start a beautiful wavy scarf, my Estes Park Wool Market purchase of Plain & Fancy sport weight yarn in a Primary colorway tangled. Tangled badly. Tangled into so many hopeless knots that Mr. Cool told me to just toss it.

"We'll buy more yarn," he said. When I protested that this was special, he suggested I just wait until next year's Wool Market. I stared blankly. Plainly, he does not know the inherent stubbornness of the women in my family. So, nine hours of carefully picking out knots, threading the growing balls of yarn through loops, and wailing at the sheer mangled tangles, I have two nicely wound balls and a scarf started. Four of those hours involved me staying up past midnight on a Friday, picking trance like through the knots.

There's a metaphor in all this--perhaps that I won't settle for a tangled life, perhaps that I am simply too stubborn. I could make a metaphor about Jesus gently picking through the knots in our lives to leave us clean and smooth. Maybe I could focus on the irony of untangling yarn only to carefully tangle it back up through the process of knitting.

An ancient form of meditation involved labyrinths, and this yarn became to me a maze, a way of breaking down all worries and struggles into following a single thread through each loop and knot.

Hmm--this might be a bit too philosophical, but I had to get something more than balls of yarn out of my weekend.