Stick to your knittin'

This is something my aunt and cousin (our babysitter) used to tell me when I was just a little girl, whenever I would tattle or comment on someone else's choices in life.

Now that I am a knitter, I've learned the lesson in Mindfulness it also provides.

I am knitting my sister a wrap for Christmas -- just under three yards of wave and shell stitch in a beautiful variegated yarn of blues -- except when I start to mentally drift and then find I made a mistake.

In case you don't know. When one makes a mistake, one must un-knit each stitch until one gets to the offending error, or the entire pattern is upset. Un-knitting, or knitting in reverse, is called "Tinking." (Knit, spelled backward.)

I've done quite a bit of tinking on this project, because I haven't been "sticking to my knitting" in both senses!

My aunt and cousin were right. Forty years later and I am still learning the lessons I didn't, back when....