A million years ago when I was a much younger woman than I am now, I was assigned the task of reading Samuel Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” which is, according to an entry at Wikipedia, one of the longest poems ever written in English. This is in no small part due to the fact that the ancient mariner’s “rime” is really not a poem so much as a story within a story written in rhyme, and like the water featured in the poem, I have yarn scraps every where.

The framing story is that of the wedding guest. He is in a hurry and running late, but just as the wedding guest is about to cross the threshold and enter the quarters of the bridegroom, he is detained by the character of the ancient mariner.

The ancient mariner, like a lot of us as we get older, has a story that he thinks the wedding guest should hear — not later, but now — and so the mariner somehow transfixes the younger man with his twinkling eye, and the wedding guest finds himself sitting on a nearby stone where he remains for another 3,500 words.

As with most stories told by mariners, water is involved, and it easy in this day and age of climate control and water systems to realize just how dependent we are on the systems that attempt to tame and clean this astounding resource.

Yesterday, before I set out for the ball park to watch the Durham Bulls play the Toldeo Mud Hens, I had my current front burner crochet project ready to go using the yarn scraps that I seem to have every where.

I had gotten this series of photos of my progress:

and I had plenty of yarn scraps with me so I could work on it during the game, but while it ended up being a good night for the Durham Bulls, it was not the most auspicious of nights for ball park crochet.

It started on the drive over to the ball park when it went from humid but not raining to humid with a torrential downpour. By the time we arrived in Durham the rain had begun to abate, but the start of the game was delayed.

Eventually it stopped raining long enough to take the tarp off the field, and while the air was still moist, the game was able to begin.

However, by the top of the fourth inning there was, to quote Coleridge:

“Water, water, every where,”

and some of that every where was on my crochet project as I attempted to fit in one more and then one more stitch. Eventually, however, I had to concede that the rain was a more powerful force than my crochet, and I had to set my work aside.

So when awoke this morning, I had big plans. I was going together ta lot done. I was going to make up for all of the crochet that was undone, and to some degree, I did.

I found a ball of yarn scraps that had fallen behind a piece of furniture, I got at least

Here is one photo I was able to get in the mid-afternoon light:

and here is a second of the scrap yarn crochet ripple afghan in all of it’s scrappy zigszag glory:

While I often work hard using my crochet hook to bring order to the corner of the world I inhabit, a rain delay or two is a humbling reminder of just how easy it is for the power of nature to reverse so many of our efforts to tame it.