Goodness Knows: “the olive plan 2008″

The myriad of ways we find to make connections between the creative work of our hands and peace is endlessly fascinating. This week I crossed paths with Em-En’s I Like Lemons blog. She’s knitting olives for peace … large olives, small olives, black olives, green olives, stuffed olives and not … at least one olive a week, for peace. As Em-En describes her project for the year,

I’ve come up with an idea that is quite simple in its basis, but which I am hoping will help keep me optimistic as I begin the journey into this year.

I intend to knit at least one olive every week this year. Why olives? Well, olive trees/branches/fruit symbolize peace, prosperity and love (”olive you”). By the end of the year I should have a jar full goodness. Ok, ok. So I also need to use up some yarn, but with each olive I knit I’ll be reminded of the things I wish for myself and the people I care about.

Inspired by Em-En’s gentle approach, I’m planning to check out her patterns, raid my sock yarn basket for remnants, and hope that the TikkunTree will show signs of bearing fruit this week.

p.s. If you are interested in knitting olives instead of leaves for the TikkunTree, there are any number of possibilities for inspiration and patterns in addition to Em-En’s olives, including the few I’ve found:

• Em-En’s knitted cherries, which can be converted to use for clusters of olives
• felted olives by Mary Jane, Midge, and Mink (which were Em-En’s inspiration; M, M & M provide a useful tutorial as well)
• Bittersweet’s peas (which come along with a very sweet pod)
• Pat’s hollyberries
• Roxycraft’s crocheted cherries
• any others you know of and can share?