Prayer Cloth with Cross

One of the members of the Prayer Cloth group, Joan, offered a very simple and nice pattern for a Prayer Cloth with a Cross in it. I have made a couple of them. Here is the first one, made with the original pattern. It is about 4 x 6 inches. Thank you, Joan!!!!


I made the Cross Prayer Cloth a second time, adding a slightly wider border. This made it come out almost a perfect small square. It is 5" wide and just under 5" high. I made a little border, too, between the arms of the cross, and the left and right edges, to deferentiate it from the wider border. I really like *both* versions. I am so happy with these Prayer Cloths, because they are so easy to do and knit up so *quickly*. Even though I know that getting a Prayer Shawl done is in *God's* timing, not mine, I still have such a hard time not feeling frustrated because I just cannot do shawls fast enough. For instance, a friend of mine from the Daughters of the King, had a heart attack on Monday. I was supposed to meet her and go to a nursing home to visit and bring a little treat. The DOK tries to do this at least once a month. At the last minute, I couldn't go ... I called and talked to my friend, late Monday morning. I had been thinking of calling her to see how things went when I got a prayer request that she'd had a heart attack and was in ICU! Well, I couldn't get a shawl made for her, but now I have this small but very lovely Prayer Cloth to take to her -- probably later this afternoon, though I need to find out if she can have visitors.

I have also started making prayer cloths for the SFASU students who are Orthodox (OCF). Here is a pic of one of them. It's a lot bigger -- about 10" square. As I look at this pic, I think I have finally gotten the proportions about as good as they will get. I would like to work on making a smaller version, though. The small Prayer Cloth with the simple cross took me about an hour, whereas the Orthodox Prayer Cloth took me *four* hours! I don't think I can get it as small as the simple cross, but I'd love to be able to do one in a couple of hours. The reason is that it is easier to justify taking 2 hours out from my work to pray and knit than four. . .