Mandala 2020 - Stage 9

The Mandala Project is now half way completed. Woot!

So much has happened since I started this journey. The personal grief has been joined by the national and global grief of the COVID-19 pandemic. The uncertainty of moving forward through this time on a personal level has met the challenges locally and nationally of social distancing and sheltering in place as we strive to "flatten the curve" of the virus. Some days are almost too much - teeth chattering without a fever - as stress piles onto stress.

Then I pick up this project and give my poor heartbreak a rest as I focus focus on the stitches, the counting, the tension of the yarn. The rhythmic hook in yarn over hook in pull through again and again over thousands and ten thousands of times becalms, becomes a heartbeat, soothing, creating, sustaining, calming.

Each round is eight repeats, and that first one, and the second, are the hardest. Sussing out the pattern, the construction, putting in and pulling out, counting, helps me understand the patterns of this life time, yet removes me from the same as I place myself into the work at hand. I think of this, the work at hand, and I begin to understand that this is the calming thing. I KNOW what is coming, what to do, how to do it. Even if it lasts just an hour or two a day, this I know in this unknowing time.

Mandala 2020 - Stage 8

The Mandala is nearing the half way point, and each row fills with added stitches to make the circle. It is taking longer to complete each round, so I fully expect a slowing down, a quieting of the initial storm sustained by the excitement of newness and discovery. This is when patience for and dedication to the finished product set in and (hopefully) sustain me to the end. Or, just as likely, they vanish and this becomes a smaller version of the whole project leaving me with lots of yarn to start another new and exciting project to begin, begin, begin and not end. An addition to the collection of Not Finished Yet.

Despair chased hope around and around on this section as I watched the numbers of COVID-19 cases climb and the dates of our Scotland trip slip away without us. Entries in the daily book documented the last years' adventures anew each day. Easter came and went; not a single egg was boiled. I took a few days off from work for rest and rejuvenation in the garden; tears chased contentment, watered new plants.

The Mandala was fraught with the same polarized mixture, this time of success and failure; I pulled out as many stitches as I put in on the last few rounds, trying to get the rhythm, to understand the pattern, to accept the results with faith and grace that the next row would be okay. Move on, keep going. A slipped stitch here or a missed one there will not shipwreck the project. Move on. Keep going.

Move. On. Keep. Going.

Mandala 2020 - Stages 5 through 7

Since last posting the novel Corona Virus pandemic has truly swept the US. Well over one million people world wide have contracted the virus - at least that is the number tested with positive results. Of all the apocalyptic items taught in Sunday school, I never dreamed pandemic would appear in my lifetime. Wars, yes. Insects, of course. Frenetic and outrageous weather, definitely. But not pandemic.

Regardless of COVID-19, the wheels of the Mandela go around and around.

They are challenging - some go around in a circle, familiar. Some double back; in some I stitch below and others, prepare to stitch from above.

Like the time we are now living through, reading ahead in the directions doesn't prepare me for the actual work of the round. I haven't been there before and simply need to live through the act of creation.

And, like every circle in the world, there is just no way to get ahead, be prepared, see around the upcoming corner.

I have spent a good amount of time undoing stitches as well, reinforcing my belief in try try again. There is no shame in failure, backspacing, pulling stitches. This act provides me more practice making the stitches, understanding the construction methods, dreaming and scheming of ways to utilized this knowledge in the next project - the one on the other side of this circle.