Manik --grasp

MANIK -- Hand -- grasp -- completing things

Working with our hands brings us into union with S/he who has made us -- Creator, whether it be God/dess, Spirit, Universe, or Energy naturally loves its creation.

Today, I'm weaving thread I spun last fall. I'm making tiny pouches for tiny stones and momentos -- I'll felt them and they will be even smaller. They will be just right to keep a memory, a seed, or an object of art or prayer.

Sometimes, the things I love best that I have made are the ones with 'flaws'. Thread that spun fat and thin (I can do this on purpose now), and weavings that took two leaps instead of one (this too, has turned to technique) can create patterns in the felted patch. Sometimes it's the thing that leaped away from the pattern that gives the truest art. It's the catch in the voice you didn't intend that makes the song unforgettable -- the dusty shade of green that your art defines as moss where you intended grass to grow that opens a new world of possibility to explore.

When I first learned to knit, I was ten years old. It was on borrowed needles with a bit of old yarn. I kept knitting and messing up and frogging it out and knitting it again. I aimed toward completing something -- a pair of house shoes, I think it was, but I never got there. Looking at the flaws kept me from going on. If I'd have stopped looking back at mistakes and finished the thing, I might have kept knitting all those years between ten and fifty. My house shoes might look like misshapen potholders, but it would have been complete and I would have loved it, flaws and all.

Years ago, a prophet (now we'd call him an intuitive reader) by the name of Randy Housh told me, "Whatever you turn your hand to will be successful. That's the word of the Lord for you, today."  Yesterday, a fortune cookie held the same message: "You will be fortunate in everything you put your hand to."

To the fortune of the cookie and the prophet of the Lord, I'll say,  "So be it!" and go finish my mistakes to cherish.