I started this mandala afghan after a tragic death in our family in early February 2020. This is slow, rhythmic, methodical, meditative, creative work. As I grieve, be reaved of joy by the thieves of delayed sorrows of the past years, I run to it because I don't know where else to run. Into the stitches are woven the hopes, regrets, joys, sorrows; the loss and the lives, the corporeal and the spiritual. Each round, each thousand or ten thousand stitches documents the slow move into who and where I am, or will be, on the other side of the grief.
Both my grand Mothers, who also crocheted, sit with me in this endeavor. Their forte was doilies worked with needles so tiny as to seem without a hook and thread gossamer thin. I discovered Elizabeth's workbasket when we cleaned out dad's place last summer. A visceral shock of memories as it contained not only decades of childhood memories, but also the project she was working on when she died, a doily so finely crafted that I wonder how she could work it with fading eyesight and bent, arthritic hands.Did my grand Mothers run to their crochet to work through their emotions, too, round after round, letting go, putting in, documenting who and where they were in their place and space and time? Will my mandala be a document to this place and space and time for me?
I am not so skilled in crochet to claim this pattern as my own. It is called Mandala Madness, copyright by Helen Shrimpton, 2015, www.crystalsandcrochet.com. She deserves all the credit for developing, writing and then sharing this pattern.
