Sometimes Garter Stitch is just the thing.  It is a fine stitch design-wise, of course,  but I am talking about it as a process.  When my life is especially full – with events, logistics, people, decisions, conversations, transitions, travel, meetings, etc. – as it has been for the past couple of months, well, God be praised for Garter Stitch!

At present, I am garter-ing away on a crib blanket for grandbaby #3 due in November – Sonja and Jordan’s first child.  We will find out whether he/she is a he or a she this summer, so until then we are knitting gender-neutral items and the Moderne Baby Blanket in Kay Gardiner’s and Ann Shayne’s  Mason-Dixon Knitting seemed ideal – especially as Sonja approved of the sophisticated asymmetrical design.

We made a quick yarn store dash last weekend and I picked 4 wool yarns. Since I had to go back again to get more yarn (there was no time for yardage calculation during the quick dash!), I ended up with 2 more yarn colors (since there were no more balls of the Taos I had bought and since I decided the border should be in a solidish contrasting color that was not in the main blanket).

This project is proving to be balm for the harried spirit! Partially because of the lovely wool yarn, of course, but mostly because of simple Garter Stitch.  Meditative, straightforward, soothing.  It requires no counting, keeping track, switching about.  It just moves along at a comfortable trot, getting itself done.

Working this project has made me realize how much design work I have been doing in the past year-plus!  It is fabulous to just sit down and read the directions and follow them and have something turn out the way it is supposed to!  The numbers are there and everything!  Wow.

I always think that lace knitting suits Spring – and it does, like an intricate May Dance with precise steps and turns, all delicately and joyfully performed.  But now I also know that Garter Stitch suits Spring as well – it is like the sowing of seeds in the ground, repetitive and hopeful, intuitive and ancient.