Behold The Wisdom of the Crocheted Scarf

This post has two purposes and hopefully I get around to both of them before you fall asleep on your keyboard. I can be long-winded sometimes, ya know.

{I kinda sorta stole this title from my post about the fitted sheet and the life lessons I learned from it. You can read it here if you happened to miss it. This whole thing also really reminds me of this post about cross stitching.}

So as you can probably guess, this post has to do with life lessons I learned from crocheting a scarf. Yay.

Please contain your excitement, folks.

But before I get around to explaining that, I have to tell you that my ward put on an activity this past Saturday where we hosted a bunch of different classes. They were: beginning/advanced crocheting, sewing from a pattern, interior decorating, and food storage.  I went to the advanced crocheting class where we were taught how to make a wicked-awesome looking scarf, but we'll get to that in a minute.

When it was time to go to the sewing class, I circled around the table with the sewing machines and finally settled on a machine that still had its cover on. I said out loud to the sister next to me, "I sure hope this sewing machine is simple. I'm not the best at sewing and I need a machine that isn't smarter than me." We both laughed and I whipped off the cover.

Um.... pretty sure the darn thing could fly to Mars and back. Unmanned. And take a dirt sample while it was at it. And analyze it. And cure cancer and world hunger. And do my laundry. And quote Shakespeare. All simultaneously, mind you.

That picture isn't the actual machine, but it gives a fairly good representation. However, I'm pretty sure the one I was using had more buttons, if that's even possible. I figured out which sister owned the machine (we'll call her Sister Sewing-Genius), flagged her down, and had her thread the darn thing for me. Suffice it to say, it kicked my trash. 

I saw the beginning of a crocheted project in the hands of Sister Sewing-Genius and asked what she was making. She scoffed and said, "Um, a scarf or something. I'm not really sure. I might be able to sew, but I can't crochet for the life of me!"

Sister Sewing Genius is just that - a sewing genius. She's also the wife of our previous bishop. And has 5 kids. And a darn cute house. To hear her admit to not being able to do something made me realize that we all have strengths and weaknesses, and we're not all the same. She can sew a wedding dress; I can barely sew an apron. I can probably crochet a little better than her, but she has raised 5 darling kids. 

And another thing, just because we don't know how to do something doesn't mean we can't learn. 

Anywhoo. . .  now on to the wisdom of the crocheted scarf. 

I was crocheting away (with my nose in the directions) and it occurred to me that in order to complete the pattern, I have to build a foundation for the following stitches. Every stitch builds on its predecessor. I can't progress with my scarf unless I have followed the directions and taken the necessary steps.

Am I making any sense?

Probably not. 

But I like to think that life is a lot like making that scarf. We take things one stitch at a time, and pretty soon we end up with a beautiful, elaborate scarf (assuming we follow "the directions"). We can't skip around and expect to have something to show for it. We can't try and jump ahead to something in our lives that we're not prepared for because we haven't laid the foundational stitches.

Oh man. 

Are you asleep yet? Drooling on your keyboard? Well, wipe it up and move along because I'm done now. :) Hopefully you at least had a good dream.