I have been working on crocheting this blanket for nearly 2 years now. It's the project I grab whenever we go on a long car ride (an hour or so at least) just to work on while I'm sitting and riding.

My mom asked me the other day "who's that for?" No one. "Why are you making it?" I really don't know. I like the colors of the yarn - Mandala yarn from Walmart - and I'm only using the slip stitch so there are no "toe holes" that catch your toes and let cold air in. Other than that, this blanket has no meaning.

Yet, it means so much to me. After a stressful day yesterday when I helped in a difficult situation and feel completely drained today, it was so relaxing to sit and start to crochet on it again. Even if it was for a few minutes, just feeling the yarn between my fingers and the warm comfort of the blanket - even though it is still quite small - was soothing. It was much needed.

I've had several projects like this and am always saddened when they are "completed."  

Crocheting and sewing have always been a stress outlet for me. The moment I feel the material in my fingers I just want to sit all day long and not stop. I've learned as I've gotten older that it's a lot like meditation to me. I do need to take breaks and come back to the "real world" in order to find balance.

Typically whatever I make finds it's way to someone else, it has been a rare occasion that I've kept my creation. But now I'm slowly making things just for me. It's not being selfish, it's giving myself a reminder, a personal blessing from a time that I needed to find those blessings the most.

I'm also working on a sweater jacket. I have no pattern, just using my knowledge of patterns from when I used to sew. A couple years ago I had made myself a sweater jacket. It was with thick grey yarn and it has a long wide good - something like a mix between a Swiss knit hat or a Gnome hat that hangs down and a hood of a cloak. I trimmed it with a beautiful red and out of the point of the hood is a secondary point with the same red. It is heavy but I love wearing it (although I have not as yet dug it out of my basement this year). It is a one of a kind, and not completely finished. I still have some things I want to add, I just haven't thought of how or the method I want to use. 

These projects not only help to center and ground me, they let me define a part of who I am. My father-in-law has commented on how I'm always working on something with yarn (easy to take on the 8 hour trip to his house) and that it amazes him, these things I make, as he hasn't known anyone creative. This gives me a sense of pride as well.

So, why do I work on a blanket with no meaning? Because it holds so many meanings that are held in my heart.

It holds memories of softball games and tournament weekends when I would crochet in between games while we wait for our daughter's next game, of casual conversations with friends, of snuggling on the couch with my husband and kids watching a show on TV, of the trips we take and the places we have been, of heartfull conversations with my husband and kids while we just snuggle in the living room, of peaceful mornings when everyone is either at work or school and I have some free time to crochet in meditative silence, of snowy evenings and warm summer nights, of when kids would wrap themselves up in it and find comfort even though it isn't completed yet, of kung fu classes and cheer competitions. This blanket has traveled with us to so many places and has been with us through so many events and conversations that it will be one of the many blankets that hold the memories secret until one of us snuggles in and it will whisper the memories for us to relive and make us smile.

I hope that you will find items that hold no meaning as well for they are the most cherished.

~Many blessings