My Queen Cal Crochet

It’s first thing in the morning, the horses are already fed and there’s a steaming cup of coffee on the table next to me. I pick up my current work in progress and I settle into the couch. Three quarters of the way done, what will become a queen-sized monster of an afghan when it’s completed, is now too big to leave the house with me to help pass the time in waiting rooms. I settle the mass of twisted and looped together yarn across my lap and pick up my crochet hook to continue work where I had left off.

Right on schedule, my cats arrive, the young one playing with the finished edge on the floor; tumbling and pouncing with exuberance that even a toddler would envy. Meanwhile, the older cat, purring with the loud rumbliness of an old engine just warming up, winds himself along the working edge where my hands are, coaxing attention from me with all the subtlety of a bulldozer. I put down the massive edge I am working on stitching so I can tell him what a magnificent specimen of a cat he truly is, the only way he will accept, with pets and cuddles.

Soon, the kitten is curled in a ball on top of the blanket that has been her favorite toy since its beginnings. She carefully chose the spot right between where my feet are under the blanket, so she has extra support around her back. It also happens to be the place where the first of the day’s sun streams through the nearby window, meeting every criterion a discerning young cat could possibly have. My older cat, now reassured that all is well in the world, lays on the top right corner of the blanket where the row I am still trying to work on is already complete. He sprawls out, watching my hands with a languid intensity that only a satisfied feline can manage. I continue with the row that I have been working on; my only goal: get one row done per day, thus beginning my day on a positive note.

The blanket, which was supposed to have been finished in three months, is currently at nine months and still the end is nowhere in sight. This used to stress me out, back when I thought I needed to complete a project within a specific time frame so I could give everyone in my family a blanket for the holidays. As I finish the row, I tie off my yarn and run my hand over the soft cloth I am creating. I look down to my sleeping kitten, smiling as I remembered how excited she was when the first ball of yarn made its way into the living room, and how amazed she was that the yarn would move and dance for her to stalk while I was working with it.

Then I looked at the second repeat of the pattern, where I would make my first deviation from the pattern I was following. That mistake was made the week after I had put down my dog unexpectedly. I hadn’t eaten for a week, and all I could do was sleep, so when I finally made some progress on the afghan, there wasn’t a force within this world that could make me unravel it when I saw that I hadn’t followed the repeats correctly. I just incorporated it into the design and made it a little more my own instead of an exact replica of someone else’s vision. I remember the numb concentration I used during that part of the blanket, when I needed any movement, anywhere in my life to remind me that the rest of the world hadn’t stopped just because part of mine had.

Further up, I stroked the part of the blanket that I would work on while my boyfriend and I discussed building a life together, where we would cuddle under a different blanket as the chill fall days crept towards winter and the afghan began to look like a shawl instead of a scarf. Dreams and plans were made as I balanced out the earlier deviations in order to make it look like I meant to make the pattern look the way it did.

Next comes the centerpiece, a completely improvised mass of the pattern that wasn’t what the original designer had intended. I figured it out during Christmas, curled under the beginnings of the blanket while we opened presents. It was finally big enough to use as a blanket in its own right and I would carefully re-count and re-mark the stitches so I could get the new pattern symmetrical. Then I stitched the carefully drawn-out design into being while my boyfriend and his brothers threw themselves across the freshly re-worked living room floor, playing vintage Sega and Nintendo games as they celebrated time off from work for them and no school for the kids.

My fingers find their way to the fringe, the only place that still shows the turmoil of the next section that I created. When I first worked through the pattern after the centerpiece, I had been awoken at five am on the second full day of work at a new job by my boyfriend telling me that I wasn’t giving him enough attention anymore, and that he would be leaving and not coming back. I worked those rows with angry, spiteful tears clouding my vision. Unsurprisingly, this meant mistakes were made. This time, the mistakes could not be camouflaged by altering the pattern, and by the time I saw the missteps, they were so far back I found myself unraveling row after row after row. As I re-worked them, I gradually found myself less bitter and angry. By the time I came to the final row of that torn apart catastrophe, I discovered I was more than a little bit proud of myself for taking the time to fix the problem with the pattern so it would be as beautiful as I had originally imagined it when I was just picking out the colors and fibers of the yarn months earlier. I also found myself profoundly grateful on that last stitch of the previously frogged rows for the opportunity to re-do a part of the afghan and make it a reminder of my ability to heal; myself and the blanket.

The next section I made while laying on the couch, cuddling with my newly minted teenager of a daughter. We would watch hours of Netflix under the blanket while I worked, sometimes she would read a book to me, and somedays, she would just tell me about her life at school. It turns out teenage life is just as hard as I remember it being, and somedays all she does is wrap the blanket around her and cry. Of course, she has no idea what really is so wrong that she needs to sit and cry, but I sit with her, hands busy while she lets her emotions overcome her, comforting her the only way I know.

This brings me to the newest part of the blanket, where my older cat is laying, watching me examine the different parts of my life that I have woven into this blanket. I can’t help but smile as I reach over to pet him, admiring the simplicity of the area I have been working on. It’s the perfect mirror to the first half of the blanket. Recently, I have taken to using my early morning time to cuddle with the cats and get ready for my day ahead. Maybe I don’t get much work completed every day, but the peace it brings me is immeasurable, knowing that at least I am making some progress.

As I see my trials and triumphs; the pieces of my life that I have stitched into the weave of this blanket over the past few months, I am reminded that every day is an excuse to start over, perfection is a myth and that life is a million tiny twists and turns connected into itself; just like a crocheted blanket.