I knit prayer shawls.
I’d been hearing about them for years before I tried my hand at it, and then a
close friend developed some serious health issues and I thought I’d make one
for her.
In case you might not
know what a prayer shawl is, according to The
New Prayer Shawl Companion (by Janet Severi Bristow and Victoria A.
Cole-Galo), the term originally was “associated with the tallit worn by Jewish
men and some women,” but now has an expanded meaning to include “gifts,
livingly stitched into being by the shawl maker…Well wishes, good intentions,
and thoughts for the recipient are added into every stitch.” The Prayer Shawl
Ministry is an international group that makes shawls to be given out to
recipients who, chances are, may be complete strangers to those knitting or
crocheting the shawls. Most groups, who are all volunteers, meet in a church
and do needlework together; it’s a time for both socializing and for prayer.
I am not a member of
such a group, although I very much admire what they do. They distribute shawls
to friends, and friends of friends, far-away relatives, and perfect strangers:
anyone in need of a prayer, a blessing, and some warmth. I work on my own and
give them to people I know who are going through a hard time and can use some
gentleness in their lives. And like those in the Ministry, I try to stitch good
thoughts and positive energy into what I knit. After making my first shawl, I
started making them for other friends who were all dealing with an illness, or
who were caregivers for loved ones who had health issues. I love making them, and even had the
opportunity to knit one at the request of a recipient: she wanted to give one
to her sister.
But then, being me,
my thoughts strayed to the opposite side of a prayer shawl. Probably because I
once read a book called Stitches in Time,
by Barbara Michaels. I don’t know if anyone else reading this has ever enjoyed
a Barbara Michaels book, but if you haven’t, you might want to give her a try.
She writes stories that are filled with hauntings, but not with slasher-type
horror, or heavily-evil presences. If you ever saw the Barbara Stanwyck
made-for-TV movie “The House That Wouldn’t Die,” that was based on a Barbara
Michaels book titled Ammie, Come Home.
And anyone who has seen the movie will recognize that phrase immediately.
Stitches
in Time is a book
about a quilt made during the 1800’s, and the person sewing that quilt had good
reason to imbue the fabric, the thread, and the needlework itself not with
prayers, but with a curse. In the book, the twentieth-century woman who
eventually comes to own the quilt runs into the still-potent malevolence woven
into the otherwise beautiful, historically-important coverlet. (Even typing that
synopsis out now, I think to myself, what a FANTASTIC idea for a story! I
remain a big fan of Barbara Michaels!)
So I went online,
looking for the possibility of a quilt that might have a curse – or many – sewn
into it, but didn’t find anything beyond superstitions involving quilts. Most
of those were pretty mild, like if you start a quilt, make sure you finish it
or you may never marry. But something as strongly paranormal as suggested in
the book by Michaels didn’t crop up for me. A pity. I would have loved a good
cursed- or haunted-quilt story!
I imagine that in the
end, anything made by hand could be charged with either good or positive energy
by the person making it. I think about the haunted paintings I wrote about in
my Facebook post last week. In “The Haunted Collector”, John Zaffis even talked
about how a painting could hold onto the artist’s energy since that artist had
put so much of her- or himself into the finished product. By extension, I
suppose that would hold true for anything like a quilt, or a hand-knit article,
or in a writer’s case, the original manuscript. I believe that. After all, I’m
the one who can’t hang out in antique stores without becoming overwhelmed by
what I feel there. And those are just items that a person owned. An item a
person actually created would surely have an even stronger attachment than just
a possession.
Got anything
hand-knit, hand-sewn, or hand-crocheted that’s been passed down to you? Just
saying…
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