Sometime in mid-November, I came across news of an article published in the journal Science. Using an iPhone application, researchers M. Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert discovered this: A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind.

It turns out, the secret to happiness is to pay attention to what you are doing. To that end, I have been, with varying degrees of success, working to corral my wandering thoughts. I have been paying particular attention to this when I crochet.

Since I first saw Crochet with Raymond’s crocheted mandalas, I have wanted to make one.

At the time, I was in the throes of completing a project for the North Carolina State Fair, and since then, my crochet circumstances have been such that I did not feel I had time to make one.

But the hurly burly of the Christmas season has made me realize I will never feel that I have the time to make one. So instead of waiting for a moment that will never come, I got out my stash of Red Heart Super Saver yarn, a 5.0 mm hook and, using this tutorial, got started on my first crochet mandala.

The project has been slow going for me. I have other things I am working on to which I assign a greater priority, but the mandala is perfect for short bits of time as each round is completed relatively quickly, an the stitch is meditative in nature rather than challenging from both intellectual and manual dexterity perspectives. Here is what I have done so far:

Tomorrow will be a day filled with errands and other obligations outside the house.

I will bring the crochet mandala along so that when I feel a need to bring my thoughts and my actions together in one place, I will have have the tool I need to crochet my way to the next epiphany.