10,000 blessings

    At about 4AM, I woke up with a compelling need to, well, okay, go to the bathroom, but also to get a specific yarn from my spare room and start another of the cabled scarves -- only with three cables instead of only two. Although I can't now remember, there was some reason why I needed to do this.     I grabbed the yarn and cast on, but it seemed much too loose and so I dropped down two needle sizes (US 7) and began again. I worked on it through the morning as we went to appointments, and as I knitted, I began to repeat the Great Mantra (calming when my DH is fussing about stupid drivers, highway construction, etc.) I started wondering what size a piece of knitting would have to be to make 10,000 repetitions. Thus was born my Meditation Scarf.

    Now, I can't share the pattern I use, because it is simply an adaptation of the cabled scarf in Leigh Radford's One Skein (pages 32, 35-36). Increasing the number of cables from two to three, for me, represents the Three Jewels (refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha), as well as the Three Poisons (greed, anger, ignorance) we all strive to overcome. However, all you need is a 40 stitch width for 250 rows to make your 10,000 stitches/repetitions. Every 25 rows will be 1000 stitches/repetitions.
The background on my laptop is a beautiful valley in Tibet.     And speaking of Tibet, EVERYONE needs to see this short video of what Chinese soldiers are doing to Tibetans! How can our country continue to do business with this government?!? How can the world even consider taking the Olympics there in two years?!? How can we as a country justify not responding to this kind of atrocity?!?     I'm heading back to the scarf . . . a long nap as the consequence of my early morning compulsion, so I'll be awake awhile longer tonight.