CHEVRONS

My Mom taught me to crochet when I was in elementary school. We began with single crochet chaining, double crochet stitches, and eventually created more elaborate patterns. In her crafting projects, Mom gravitated toward chevron patterns. Her blanket colors and sizes were different, but Mom’s handiwork often displayed her signature “V” stitch.

I remember Mom looking peaceful when she crocheted. I’d sit on the couch beside her and pull yarn from the skein at a pace to match her stitching flow. Her hands moved rapidly but she was silent other than quietly repeating patterns in a definitive tempo style. Her chevron “cadence” was, “ten crochet up, top the peak with three doubles, chain one, top the next peak with three doubles, and head back down the V with ten double crochets.”

As I became more skilled in crocheting, Mom used yarn patterns to teach life lessons. Using the chevron shape, she taught about life’s ups and downs. A crocheted mountain requires counting to ten when stitching up and down. Both sides of the mountain are vital because each offer a different view of the tapestry. At the chevron points, there’s a double trinity and to finish the blanket with excellence, you cannot stop at the top or bottom of the “V”.

I watched Mom rip out several rows of a project because she made a significant error in her pattern’s foundation. She told me how one additional or missed stitch creates an off-centered blanket. I learned the importance of counting stitches and fixing a mistake as soon as you find it.

It took me one difficult lesson of not heeding her instruction. I figured with two extra stitches, I could drop one on each side, so the end number remained the same. Instead of correcting my work at that point of miscalculation, I moved forward. My first chevron afghan turned into a V shaped blanket with a small base and large fanned out top. Crocheting, as in life, is seeing how an unfixed mistake can expand and “unravel” over time.

Mom taught that when working with darker colored yarn (i.e. life’s valleys) stitches sometimes needed to be pulled gently apart for visual clarity. She adjusted to lighting limitations by using daytime to crochet dark colors and evening hours to crochet brighter hues. She taught me to relax if I didn’t see a pattern take shape until several rows were completed. She’d gently repeat, “Just keep working through it. Don’t worry about future stitches, you can only crochet one stitch at a time.”

When I start any crochet project, I still “hear” Mom’s reassurance about weaving shape into my life tapestry. Foundations are vital, all colors matter, each stitch counts, all details make a difference to the Creator.

Casting a life hook and line from my crochet and pray lily pad, Christina