A comfort blanket knitted mindfully

Tara Jon Manning, author of Mindful Knitting, describes contemplative or ‘mindful’ activities as any that ‘allow us to practice mindfulness’. She says that such activities have, ‘an object of focus that empowers us to retreat from our thoughts and feelings back to the sanctuary of our still and relaxed place. The object of focus for the mindful knitter is the repeated formation of the knitted stitch.’

In need of some self-soothing, I decided to treat myself to a truly unnecessary, beautiful, self-indulgent knitting project with which to experiment with knitting mindfully. I bought some gorgeous Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk yarn in Ruby:

With it, I am making a Clementine shawl. I am trying to focus as much as possible on the process of knitting: concentrating on every pattern repeat, every row, every stitch.

This is a really quick and lovely project to knit: the yarn is beautiful to work with and the pattern is simple and satisfying. I started on Friday evening, and here’s where I’ve got to so far:

The other notion I am playing with is is less mindful, and more of a self-indulgent appropriation of the idea of a prayer shawl. I am, metaphorically, weaving into every row various positive and affirmative thoughts to myself. I hope that when I finish this shawl I will remember these thoughts every time I wrap myself in it. I am looking forward to having my very own comfort blanket!