The Knitting Lesson

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I’m a knitter. My mom taught me to knit when I was about 7 or 8 years old. She was self-taught so we never did figure out how to read patterns. This was before the internet and Youtube so I figured out stitches by looking at pictures or knitted garments. I remember being in junior high and high school and knitting with my mom after dinner, watching a little TV before bedtime. We did more knitting in Winter, because the season just lends itself more to this kind of activity, and that still holds true nowadays.

A few months ago, back in November I think, I looked at my yarn stash and found these skeins of natural fisherman’s wool by Lion Brand. There were two skeins each of three different colors. I’ve had it for a while and decided it was time to knit something with it. So I picked up my favorite pair of chunky bamboo needles, and started a project. I figured I had enough wool to knit myself a shawl, or something like it, and I drew a picture of it in my mind. I used seed stitch and cables, and I knit it for about two months. It was like a wide scarf, and then I sewed the ends together on the short side and knit a collar up from the width of it. When I was done with it, I tried it on and hated it. It was nothing like the vision I had had, and I couldn’t stand it.

I put it aside for a few days. I could still see it in a corner of the room, forcing me to make a decision—put it away for good or take it to the second-hand store? It was made of a very nice quality wool so I really didn’t want to give it away. But I also knew I couldn’t wear it like it. There was only one possible answer, even though it pained me to admit to it. After all the weeks I had spent knitting it, I didn’t want to unmake it and start over. After looking at it for a few days, I came to terms with the solution, picked at the seams, and unraveled it. What had taken me a little over two months to make, only took two hours to unmake. In the end, I had the six balls of yarn in three colors, along with more experience for what I needed to do better next time.

I remember looking at it and thinking “I can keep it as it is, and not get any use of it because it didn’t turn out; it’s a very nice wool, and I worked hard at it, and I don’t want to unmake it. Or I can admit that I did wrong, unravel it, and make it right”. My good sense prevailed, and I have since started knitting another piece.

It was a lesson for me, and it inspired me to write an important part in my Work In Progress, a novella set in New York City. The lesson I learned became part of the experience my character needed. In fact, it was exactly what she needed, and it couldn’t have turned out any better had I planned it that way:

“When you make a mistake, what do you do about it? Do you try to fix it, or do you go on and just live with its results?”

 

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I realized there had been more than one purpose for the unraveling of my piece, and I was grateful I had let myself go through the humility of admitting I was wrong. The benefits were greater than the humiliation.

Writing is the same way. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of the parts that don’t work. It doesn’t matter how easy the words come by, they’re still not easy to write, and deleting them is relinquishing that control. But when it happens, the results are always better.

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