Knitter's First Afghan

The reason this post is going up so much earlier than normal is that I won't be getting home until very late tonight, and I don't want to have to write some crap two sentence post at midnight. I already wrote on the play for an hour today, so don't worry. I wrote several opening monologues, and right now it looks like I'll be fixing up the entire thing so that instead of having one character open with a monologue, each character will have their own to begin with. I might continue that theme throughout the three acts (the names of the acts are Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis), with each act opening with a series of monologues.
I'm going to get home so late because I'm working with a friend on a music video today. It should be a lot of fun, and she's very talented. Here's her website. (I'm sending good, "Visit my website" karma out there so maybe more people will start reading the blog). She's a very talented musician and you should all listen to her.

Today though, I want to talk about afghans, and their significance to me personally. I've grown up with handmade afghans, because I had a great-aunt Buena who made them. They were crocheted, which is an art I haven't really tried my hand at before, but I can still appreciate the mastery that went into each and every one. They are beautiful works of art. I don't remember Buena, she died before I was really old enough to get to know her, but according to those family members that did know her, she always had some handcraft project with her, mostly knitting or crochet.
Buena's afghans are stories. She gave them to people she loved, and she made them with them in my mind. As the years have passed, the afghans have been given around the family from person to person. When my mom went to college, her afghans stayed with my grandmother, who's given them out to my cousins and I, and returned a few to my mother. There is one in particular that struck me this past winter at my grandmother's house. It is an afghan that Buena made for my mother. It's a beautiful with yellow and white stripes and little vines and yellow flowers embroidered on. I fell completely in love with it. By the time I was ready to go back home, I was sad to say goodbye to it, and so my grandmother gave it to me, saying that, since it was really my mom's and I loved it so much, I should have it. That afghan went up in our cupboard with all of the other afghans Buena has made for us, waiting for their glory days of Winter, when they're brought out into the house proper to lay on beds as extra warmth on cold nights, or laid on the couch so we can bundle up on chilly Winter mornings.
For me, afghans are a true labor of love. They take a huge amount of yarn and time. There are thousands of stitches in every afghan ever made, and each one is a small act of caring. Those simple little actions add up, and carry inside of them the feelings of love and hope you have for the people you are making the afghan for. That love will wrap around them every time they wrap your afghan around them, and it will keep them warm on those cold Winter months.
For me, afghans are tradition. They are things that I can pass on to my family, and maybe one day, I'll have great-grandchildren, or great-great-nieces and nephews who will wrap those afghans around their bodies, and be told stories about me, and how I always had some hand-working project with me, and how, even though they cannot remember me, I had known and loved them. And maybe they'll pass those afghans on to their children, who will be told that they are family heirlooms, and to keep them safe, but to never hesitate to use them, because that's what they were meant to do. They were not meant to sit and look pretty. They were meant to be well used.
And, just has Buena has stayed alive because of her afghans, maybe I'll be kept alive too. Famous to only a few souls who have my works of art, made out of love for the people I cared about and for their children and their children's children. That's what I want. I want my afghans to become family treasures, and I want babies to throw up on them, and coffee to be spilled on them, and for lover's to curl up together wrapped up inside. I want my afghans to hold not only my own love and memories of making them, but the memories my loved ones have of using them, just as Buena's afghans have for my family.

That's why this first afghan is so important to me.

Thing to be grateful for today: This seems pretty obvious, but afghans.