Why Making Matters More Than Ever

So often we are distracted from the life we want to live. In this world of busy, this world of attention-grabbing media, a world where we are constantly encouraged to reach outwards, to grasp at our cultural obsessions with happiness, so often we are so distracted we don’t even know that we are looking for something. We get lost in the passivity of a life where our attention is elsewhere. A life where the very thing we seek is impossible to hear over the roar of messaging about what we should have and who we should be. We are sold desire as way of living – desire for more, desire for the shiny happy life that we are told is possible if we just do/have/say/be/think XYZ…..

We spend much of our time watching other people’s shiny happy lives on Instagram and facebook. Often we are so deep in the distraction and desire that we forget that the landscape could look different or even that there is a landscape to look at. Distraction, leading to desire, leading to discomfort, leading to more grasping at the distraction to make the discomfort go away.

In this age of distraction, of screens and content and possibility filling up every gap in our day, we forget that we have a choice. We forget that we don’t need to be living a life where we are so distracted we forget to look up. We forget that the thing we yearn for cannot be found in the amongst the distraction. That in order to live the life we yearn for, which for most of us is simply a life well-lived, that we need to step out of the steady stream of information technology, and of busy, and get active about our lives.

I am not immune.

“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. Desire is a driver, a motivator. In fact, a sincere and uncompromising desire, placed above everything else is nearly always fulfilled. But every judgement, every preference, every setback spawns it’s own desire and soon we drown in them. Each one a problem to be solved, and we suffer until it’s fulfilled. Happiness, or at least peace, is the sense that nothing is missing in this moment. No desires running amok. It’s okay to have desire. But pick a big one and pick it carefully. Drop the small ones.”

— Naval Ravikant, Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris.

In part because we are away from home, I'm having an ongoing conversation (argument?) with one of my (gorgeous) children about the amount of screen time they have. This child believes that we are unfair with our (tyrannical) screen policy. He wants his life to look like many of his peers. And yet, what he doesn’t know is that every time we have a discussion about it, I can’t stop thinking about a conversation about screens that I had with his school principal of many years ago.

Mrs. X, the principal, was talking to my kids about our household screen policy, and she was laughingly shocked. She expressed her surprise about how little they were allowed by telling my kids that there was NO WAY she could restrict her daughter’s screen time in such a way. And that it would cause a family crisis if she was to suggest to her daughter that there was no TV before school. Mrs X. expressed the sentiment “Well that’s just the way the world is these days, isn’t it!”. Hands up, helpless.

I remember being shocked myself upon seeing the helplessness she felt in the face of our cultural move towards technology. I think my shock was increased significantly her job title. She was a school principal!! She had THE authority! Surely she must be used to using her authority to create policy. For a principal must inherently believe they can shape the world children inhabit, how they learn and what they learn? Yes?

And, if even a school principal doesn't feel empowered to go against the tide, then.....

My kid doesn’t know it, but this exchange changed me.

The shock I felt that day in the face of her shock, has been ongoing reminder to me that
I always have a choice.

Sometimes I forget I have a choice, I get busy, sucked into the flow of distraction that is our culture. I sometimes get screen-obsessed and forget that I am an active participant in my own life. And sometimes that phase can last for months before my passivity and discontent leads to me making choices to fix it.

But as a parent, I have to decide what my kids' life looks like while they are little. I must decide for them so they aren’t swept along with the raging river of distraction and desire. I need to try to teach them what it feels like to have space and calm, and control over their attention, so that when they inevitably go through periods of distraction and screen addiction and busy in their lives, that they will have a reference point of something other. They will know what it feels like to just be, a reference point they can seek out with intention when they look up from distraction.

I must do this for them. Which reminds me all the time that I need to do it for myself.

“Similarly, don’t trust technology too much. You must make technology serve you, instead of you serving it. If you aren’t careful, technology will start dictating your aims and enslaving you to it’s agenda.
So you have no choice but to really get to know yourself better. Know who you are and what you really want from life. This is, of course, the oldest advice in the book: know thyself. But this advice has never been more urgent than in the 21st century. Because now you have competition. Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the government are all relying on big data and machine learning to get to know you better and better. We are not living in the era of hacking computers – we are living in the era of hacking humans. Once the corporations and governments know you better than you know yourself, they could control and manipulate you and you won’t even realise it. So if you want to stay in the game, you have to run faster than Google. Good luck! ”

— Yuval Noah Harari, Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss

How does hand making come into this?

The world, our lives, are increasingly passive and increasingly distracted. While humans have always shaped their worlds to suit them and their particular tastes, we are increasingly having our taste chosen for us.

We have to be active in our own lives. I have to create the life I want - there is no freedom from this loop of discontent unless I intentionally create it. Technology and marketeers are working against us and without making an active choice there will be no quiet, no peace, no space. No good life.

While mindfulness and yoga are regularly suggested as practices that offer respite and access to the well-lived life, I want to put my hand up for !!hand making!! as an alternative practice that should be added to the toolkit of possibility.

Hand making as the key to a good life!

I know that my making practice is the anti-dote to distraction and desire, and busy discontent, because hand making inherently holds within it the skills, qualities and techniques one needs to live well.

Making litters our lives with intention and agency. It reminds us through it's process that we can alter our environment to suit ourselves. That we have choice and agency in our lives. We made that thing!!! Look at what we did…… And then long after the active part of the making is over, the things we have made surround us with reminders of who we are. We are makers. We are creators. We are active agents in our own lives.

Making offers us access in the moment to the space where happiness, or rather satisfaction, lives. In many moments of making we sit in flow; that special space where we need nothing more than what we have in our hands. We aren’t reaching or stretching. We are exactly where we want to be. We think differently when we are in that space. We feel different. We are different. We are whole.

Making offers us meaning. When we make we get intentional – about what and for whom and how. Our making holds within it our values, our thoughts, our interests, our style, our spark, at that moment in time. It allows us to live our values, and to value our lives. It offers us products - the artifacts of our making – as evidence of our persistence, our practice, our courage, our failures, our successes and our joy.

“Real change happens on the level of the gesture. It’s one person doing one thing differently than he or she did before. ”

— Tiny Beautiful Things, Cheryl Strayed

Maybe the thing we need is a revolution. A revolution of making – where hand making is recognized for what it is – a soulful practice that can make us whole. Maybe we all need to making something, anything, regularly as the antidote to distraction, desire and discontent. This making could be a meal, a garden or a sweater. Whatever it is, it will remind us of the innately human joy we get from actively living our lives, by reminding us of our ability to shape the life we live in – by making.

Love to hear your thoughts x

Felicia

The Perfect Beginner Knitting Project - In My Opinion :)

A few months ago I taught my lovely babysitter Steph to knit. She and I had talked about a few times over the years, and when I heard she was jetting off yet again, I finally got organised to get her started.

I went to the store and purchased her three skeins of Woolfolk Luft in the Black L06 colourway and a set of circular 60cm Addi Turbos. I know that sounds a little extravagant for a first project but a. Steph is ace and b. making is a sensual experience. Making something is all about the senses - we feel knitting in our bodies - and if we don't enjoy the sensations of knitting when we begin then why would we continue to knit? I wanted to make her first knitting experience a joyous one - one that would result in a beautiful product, and make her happy - so I purchased some of the most delicious yarn I could find.

I've talked many times about how materials matter and I passionately believe it to be true, especially when you are new to the sport. Now obviously, Woolfolk Luft is taking good materials to the extreme, and not all new knitters need to start with Woolfolk ;), but in this case I wanted to thank her with something special.

So, as Steph was looking after my smalls for one last time, I asked her to come 30min early so I could teach her before we had to head out the door. I'd already got the cowl started for her by casting on, and knitting the first row of the Purl Soho Lovely Ribbed Cowl - which I believe is the perfect newbie project! We had 20 minutes to chat all things knitting.

And here we get to the opinionated point of the blog post!

Teaching Steph to knit reminded me that I have always meant to post about what I believe the perfect project for beginners actually is - in my opinion. And I keep forgetting!

You see, I believe that a lot of beginner knitters start with the wrong type of stitch pattern. And that worries me. It worries me because maybe they won't stick with knitting because they think it is too hard, or maybe they will get confused and think it is stressful. And people need knitting, and the world needs more knitters. Knitting brings so much joy to the universe.

Beginner knitters are often encouraged to start with garter stitch - and they often get flumoxed. Which makes sense - as garter gives you no indication if you are getting your knitting right or wrong as you can't tell. Garter stitch is a red hot mess to look at, especially if you are new and you don't understand how it works. Initially looking at garter is like looking at a plate of spaghetti and trying to find a pattern in it.

If they are lucky, some beginner knitters will be encouraged to start with stockinette stitch - which I still don't like - but it's an improvement on starting with garter.

Stockinette is simpler to look at and understand, which means that some folks will be able to see if they have made a mistake, but it doesn't teach you to recognise the stitch you have on the needles - as you are repeating whole rows of one stitch then the other stitch, paying little attention to what you are doing. Stockinette also feels like a waste of an opportunity to learn about reading your knitting from the very start - especially as you would have needed to learn both a purl stitch and a knit stitch.

My hypothesis: Rib is the perfect stitch pattern to begin your knitting career with, as it teaches you to read your knitting from the start.

I believe that the perfect beginner knitting project is some form of 2x2 or 3x3 rib. Through knitting rib you learn that there is a V at the front of a stitch and a purl bump at the back! It is simple, repetitive and beautiful. And by learning the structure of our knitting from the getgo then we knit with less fear and we are more confident knitters.

A few years ago I wrote a post called The Secret To Becoming A Great Knitter and it was all about learning to read your knitting, about understanding your stitches and what they looked like - for freedom, and for joy. In that post I describe how to understand your stitches and how to read them; what they look like and how to recognise them.

Reading your knitting is something you can learn from the very start of your knitting career, as Steph has just proved.

Steph had her 20 min lesson before she started her evening's babysitting, and then we went out for a couple of hours. She had knitted till we got home, then we talked about where she was at. She did take a little film of me demonstrating a knit stitch and a purl stitch, which she took with her on the plane in case she forgot, but that was her whole lesson. About 30 min total.

Fast forward a couple of months and she has a cowl. A beautiful usable wearable cowl.

Photo she sent me via an insta story! xx

This cowl gave Steph repetitive practice of the two basic stitches in knitting. She watched, and tried to learn what they look like, and she was successful. Look at that pretty cowl. No counting, no keeping track.

A simple clean rib shows the newbie knitter what stitch is what. There is a simplicity and grace to it that builds confidence.

People teach garter to newbies as they believe that it's simpler - I believe this is based on the idea that the person only has to learn the knit stitch, and not a purl. Which makes sense, but it is a false economy. Garter is confusing to look at - one row sits on top of the other disguising the stitches. Many experienced knitters can't fix mistakes in garter as it is such a hullabaloo of a stitch pattern.

Yes, learning rib will mean they will have to learn two stitches rather than one, but actually a knit and a purl are incredibly similar in their form, so it's not difficult to learn both. In each case you simply insert the needle tip, you wrap your yarn anti-clockwise through the middle of your two needles, and then you pull your needletip through and pop the stitch off. The only difference between a knit and a purl is whether you insert your needletip from the left or the right. With a bit of practice and concentration it isn't much harder to understand two stitches rather than one*.

If we pay a bit of attention, rib gives us a basic understanding of what a knit stitch looks like on your needles, and what a purl stitch looks like on your needles. By the end of knitting the cowl you know that the front of the stitch looks like (a V) and what the back of the stitch looks like (a bump). Knitting then makes sense, as do the two basic stitches.

This is why I love rib stitch for beginners so much. Steph had so much confidence that she was off to the shop to buy yarn for a TCS Simple Hat. She is almost done already and is waxing lyrical about the joys of knitting. We have another convert!

I'd love to hear about your early knitting experiences and whether this approach would have been helpful?

And if you want to learn to knit, buy some beautiful materials and try this cowl. It is a total winner.

Felicia x

* I have one exception to the rule of teaching rib to newbies and that would be for small people. Small people don't necessarily have the capacity to pay enough attention. Instead with small people, my preference when teaching is to use circular needles and get them to knit a hat in the round..... I'm happy to finish off the top, or instead you can do a square top which kinda make ears. They love the ears.

Breaking The Rules

So I was always the kid with the why. Why should I do it that way? And why can't I do it? And why and why. And why.

That said, I was also incredibly happy when someone gave me a good reason ie. a good reason was simply one that made sense to me. I wasn't unreasonable. I just wanted to understand.

Perhaps it didn't make me the easiest child to parent, but what it did do is make me a great researcher. If someone couldn't answer my question to my satisfaction, I would just keep searching and asking, and harassing and pestering, until someone could explain to me the why.

The thing about a why though is that it is specific to the person giving you the answer. Often the person's why doesn't apply to you given your circumstances, as you will have different needs and values to them.

And so even now, when I (finally) get a good answer to a why-based question, I often find myself again asking "but why?". Oh so annoying, but oh so true.

The bigger why, is why is that answer true?

Which is how (and why) point 5 of The Craft Sessions Manifesto exists. It speaks specifically about why stating

“It’s your craft. There are no rules to how things should be done. Do them in a way that makes sense to you.”

— me in The Craft Sessions Manifesto

Now if you have ever been to an old school craft shop of any kind, or been taught anyone like my Nana, you will know that most people think that there are many many rules around crafting (and life*). And many people believe that rules are there to be followed; that that is the point of them.

I don't. I believe that rules are often specific to a person, a need, a value, an intention or a method. And I believe that you should choose to do whatever makes sense to you. Follow the rules or break the bloody rules. Both are valid choices in many circumstances.

This came up for me recently as I'm in the process of making a lone star quilt for my middle kid, and I'm breaking the rules. I'm making it out of linen and a basic rule of quilting - that I break all the time - is don't quilt with linen as it distorts. This is particularly true when you are trying to quilt something that is complicated and precise, like a lone star quilt. If you aren't precise as you quilt, then you end up with distortion, and distortion means your quilt will be lumpy and possibly not fit together very well. It definitely won't be flat. As linen is the queen of distortion, it isn't great to quilt with. It shifts in all directions and doesn't have enough structure to be precise. Quilting with linen leads to wonky quilts.

I made the decision to make this quilt from linen as the quilt my kid wanted me to copy was naturally dyed. I'm not planning on doing much natural dyeing in the near future, so I thought the Watercolour linens from Purl Soho might be a nice substitute as they aren't flat colour, which more closely mimics natural dyed fabrics. Yes, I could have used shot cotton (which also has a different warp to weft like the linen) which would have had stability but I was in love with the Watercolour linen colours.

So I decided to break the rules. I did this with the full knowledge that my quilt might not work and that it would probably be lumpy. I took measures to avoid as much distortion as possible by making sure as I was cutting I cut along the grain or cross grain. I was careful with my seam allowances, and measured often to make sure I wasn't stretching the diamonds. It was a crazy amount more work, involved a reasonable amount of torturous picking and unpicking, but I have a quilt. And I love it.

But it is distorted.

Distorted quilt piece (especially to the left of the picture) to match my chipped nailpolish?

I tell you my story because I keep remembering this wonderful woman from Brisbane, who made the journey to a Handquilting workshop I did in country Victoria a year or two ago. She took the time, and made the arrangements, to come all that way to do the workshop simply to ask a question.... which was "Can I use this fabric (that I love!) on the back of my quilt?" You see, she had been to her local quilting shop and been told a definite no. "No you can't use that kind of fabric on the back of your quilt." She didn't understand why, and was so frustrated by the answer that she came to my workshop to ask whether what they had told her was true. She said "I know you will tell me the truth".

I've thought about her often, as she illustrates to me just how confusing and tricky it is to be new at a craft.

The tricky thing about breaking rules, is that you need to first understand what the rule is about, where it comes from, and how it became a rule. This is the why behind the why....

And the even trickier thing about the many people who tell you about "the rules of craft" is that they often can't tell you why a rule is a rule in the first place. The fact that they don't always know, often makes it tricky to assess whether breaking a rule is the way forward for you, on a given day, for a given project, with a given outcome in mind.  Because by breaking the rules will generally give you a different outcome.

Of course it's not true that you can't use a fabric you love on the back of your quilt. Of course you can use whatever bloody fabric you want. There are no quilting police - I hope.

I know that the ladies in the quilt shop were trying to be helpful to a newcomer, and were simply telling her their rules of quilting based on their understanding of what a quilt should be. Their idea of a quilt is ye old "a quilt should be precise and neat, last for at least 100 years, be flat and slightly stiff, be quilted to within an inch of it's life". They love those kinds of quilts and they teach that kind of quilting, based on what they value.

I love and value different things. I want my quilts to be snuggly not stiff, I want them to have movement. I love linen, and I like the biasing that happens to linen when you quilt it. I don't mind if my quilts only last 40 years. I'm OK when they occasionally tear as they aren't perfectly flatly quilted and so, sometimes catch on a passing tree as my kids drag them around the garden. I'm ok when they wear more quickly than they need to as they are too lightly quilted or because I've used fabrics like flannelette.

We like different things in a quilt and as such it's OK that we follow a different set of "rules" when we are making a quilt.

Biasing and lumps on my little boy's quilt. And yes some of that binding is flanellette. And the spots are a thick cotton/linen blend. Not a quilting cotton in sight :).

Breaking rules is tricky when you are a beginner as you can't tell which rules are important for your project and which one's don't apply to you. And of course breaking the rules is still really tricky even when you have experience, if you don't know why the rule is the rule. Breaking the rules can lead to disasters, and deciding whether to ignore them can be a confusing conundrum.

But breaking the rules can also lead to beauty, to a quilt that takes your breath away as it is made with the things you love**.

The way forward? The way forward is to always question the why. To find out what is behind it. Is it simply aesthetics, longevity, values, useage, personal preference, x, and y, and z.....? What is it that makes that rule a rule? And do you care? Then if you still can't decide, experiment and see what happens. All new ideas and techniques had to start somewhere, and they often came from experimentation. Innovative, interesting things often come out of smashing rules, so smash away.

Any thoughts? Disasters? Triumphs?

Felicia x

* My nana had a rule that "young ladies should only drink lemon squash". Apparently this applied even if the young lady in question was 30.

** For a set of rule breaking quilts go have a look here.

Breaking Practice Down

Often in this life we use words without truly thinking about what they mean. Today, as I was listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast with the legendary music producer Rick Rubin, I heard a definition of practice that I found incredibly insightful. It is so helpful to have a word I use, and think about all the time, stripped back to it's practicalities. 

So what did Rick say. He said that practice is two things....

Practice is being willing to fail at things

This is essential. It's understanding that in order to learn something, anything, we need to go forward and we need to go backward. We can't learn what we need to learn in order to master something in one chunk. We need to build on our learning with experience after experience and some of those experiences need to be failures. Without falling off the bike we don't learn what we need to about balance.

We will fail. We need to fail. Failing is part of learning.

Practice is not expecting to just get it first go.

We need to have the right mindset in order to persist at our practice, and in order to practice well. This means not buying into the talent myth. This is about setting our expectations such that we stick at it and don't spiral into despondency. We need to avoid the mindset that says that if we were going to be able to do it that we should have gotten it already. Because it's not helpful and it's not true.

It's about believing that with persistence (and practice :)) we can learn just about anything.

To Rick's description I would add the following two things...

Practice is engaging in curiosity

Practice is not simply repetition. It is being curious about why one thing works and another thing doesn't. It is actively striving for greater understanding and for improvement.

Practice is in itself a practice

In order to be good at practice we need to practice. Practice getting over our falls, practice being curious, practice not setting our expectations too high based on where we are today.

Practice is about more than just the physical aspects of whatever we are trying to master. It is about learning to manage our heads while we do so.

Practice and all is coming.

Felicia x

Our Fear of Going Back

So two weeks ago I screwed up some knitting. I knitted this little baby jumper super fast because it was fun - a test knit of the super sweet Iris Pullover by Wiksten - and the speed increased because I was knitting a Stash Less version and I really wanted to see if I could make it work. Joyful knitting - I was fully in the flow of making.

But in knitting it as quickly as I did, and as late at night, I made a mistake. A couple of mistakes actually. Firstly, I forgot the last line of the V pattern on the front of the right shoulder of the sweater. It is more noticeable in real life than it is in the photo. Secondly, I did the decreases backwards around that same shoulder which meant that the nice line you would get around the shoulder looked jagged and not quite so pretty.

It wasn't until I was almost finished, until had sewed the sweater shoulders up, knitted the neckband and had sewn on the sleeve, that I noticed it. That said, I hadn't yet sewn in the ends - but the sweater was pretty much done.

Except that it wasn't.

When I realised, I swore a little, I laughed at myself, I took a photo (to post on instagram :)) and then I quickly pulled it out. Rip the bandaid off goddammit.

What was interesting was when I posted the photo on instagram, the overwhelming reaction I got was to leave it. I reckon it was easily 9 to 1, leave it to fix it.

Everyone was lovely about it, coming up with inventive ways that I could live with my mistake, or cover it up, or creatively embellish it. I wasn't expecting the (lovely caring) response so I almost didn't say that I had already ripped it out.

But I haven't been able to stop thinking about the response ever since.

What is our resistance to going backwards? What is the fear? Or is not that we have to go backwards, but rather that we don't want to admit that we have made a mistake? Do we not want to acknowledge that we have not got it right? Got it wrong even. Are we trying to say "lalala play on! Nothing to see here"?

Or is it the "wasted" time? Are we caught up in the idea we need to be being productive, moving forward, achieving, finishing?

I've come up with a few theories about it, but I would love to understand it better, because I don't think our resistance/fear/or whatever it is, serves us well. Because we do mind when it doesn't turn out how we planned. Even if we embellish it or ignore it. It is (a little) disappointing to not end up where we hoped.

And here is the key - if we are so afraid of going backwards we must be making with fear! Fear of making mistakes, fear of having to go back, fear of living with a mistake. And making with fear must be stealing a little of our making joy.

So chime in and let me know if any of these resonate or maybe you have a different theory? I'd love to hear it.

Is it a lack of experience?

I've written about mistakes before and about ripping for joy. I believe in going back but this is something that I've learnt to do. Going back, ripping out, unpicking are skills I've practiced as part of my making practice. Doing so without any negativity towards myself, or my work, is another layer of that practice.

These days I'm quite good at it. A swear word or two, a glass of wine, a day or three and I can move on without holding on to my mistake. BUT! this wasn't something I could do earlier in my craft career. I suspect there are two reasons why.

Reason 1: Skills

Jenn popped over for a coffee when I was mid-thought about this little sweater, and reminded me that she wouldn't go back because she wouldn't be confident in her ability to fix it. I remember this. I remember not knowing enough about the structure, and not having the skills I needed to redo do something. Actually I probably didn't even have the skills to go backwards in the first place. Play-on was my only option.

This has changed as I have gaine more experience, but I wonder if I would have progressed in my skilling-up faster had I embraced trying to fix my mistakes, rather than avoiding them or pretending they weren't there. Making mistakes and fixing mistakes is the only way to truly understand what it is that you are trying to do.

"A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor" - Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In order to build up our skill set for dealing with big waves we need to practice, first on 1 ft waves, building up to 30ft waves over time. I just wonder if there is a case for throwing ourselves into 10ft waves sometimes for the express purpose of skilling-up? Do we sometimes spend too much time in the 1ft waves cause they feel safe, never gaining the joy and experience of trying something harder because of our fear?

Reason 2: Mindset practice?

At the start of my craft career I didn't have the emotional strength to go back. Finishing something felt like climbing a mountain (more on this in a minute) and so idea that there was still yet another hill to climb was demoralising to the point of me running back down the hill and out of the mountains. With more practice at making we become more emotionally confident about our abilities and more resilient. We have memories to draw on of when we have taken a deep breath and gone backwards, or climbed that extra peak, and how little it actually hurt and how good we felt.

We also come to learn - in the words of EZ - that as we do what we do because we love knitting this (setback) is simply more knitting.

However early on in my knitting career, I think I was also making it mean things like "I'm not very good at...." and "Other people do this beautifully whereas I ...."

Which leads me to some more questions.

Are we making our mistake mean something?

So when I mention my "failures" in a public forum, which I do fairly regularly, I always have some kind people tell me that I'm being a bit harsh to myself. This idea is always interesting to me, because that isn't how I feel about my failures these days. They simply don't feel harsh.

I've again been trying to train my thinking. My mistakes and failures aren't a reflection of me. They are simply mistakes and failures. They are part of the process, and simply means that I am practicing in the gap like we all are, in craft and in life.

The only way to get good at anything is to do lots of work, spend the time, be curious and make mistakes. Without mistakes we can't learn what we need to to get good, as how we look at the thing we are doing is one dimensional. If we always knit to the pattern, and never have to think outside what is written, then we learn a little. If we screw up royally, and drop a cable, and fix said cable, we learn a lot.

The word "failure" doesn't seem harsh to me because it doesn't mean anything more than that I screwed something up. It definitely doesn't mean I'm a failure. It simply means there is more to learn.

Actually in the case of this little sweater - I think the only learning would be to pay a little bit more attention. Or go to bed on time.

Do we think that going back is being pernickety?

Do we think that going back is buying into perfectionism, buying into the idea that we need to do things perfectly to have value? Are we ignoring "perfect is the enemy of good" to our detriment?

I've thought about this a lot over the years. Being a practicing completionist (ie. recovering perfectionist), I've had to make sure that I am not using fear of judgement as a reason for doing something. But given the strength of the response the other day, and the generosity and concern people exhibited for my well being in the face of going back :), I had another look at whether I was being crazy and buying into the perfectionist narrative. I don't think I am and I'm going to use an analogy to describe why not.

So, say you are climbing a mountain, a small one, but big enough that you are tired and sweaty and hot by the time you see the final peak. You take a moment, have a drink, fiddle with the straps of your pack before tackling that bastard with gumption and resolve. One foot in front of the other to get to the top. You are hot and sweaty and tired but you are also enjoying it. Because you like climbing mountains. that is why you are here; to climb the mountain, see the magnificent sights, feel the breeze and revel in the freedom that comes with being in the great outdoors on a mission. But then this thing happens. Right before you get to the top of the peak, you see in the nearish distance that you actually got it wrong. This peak you saw is not the top of the mountain. Your expectations of being near the finish are dashed, and you feel a little demoralised with a dose of disappointment and exhaustion. And yet, you are here to climb the mountain. You know how glorious it will feel to have achieved what you set out to achieve. And so you take a deep breath, have a sip of water, fiddle with your straps and put one foot in front of the other. To not climb the final peak, because you had to keep going when you thought you were finished, would be to deny yourself the satisfaction of completing your true goal. And who would do that?

I was trying to make a sweet little stash less baby sweater. It was going to be glorious. Yes! I thought I was finished and I was excited, only to discover right before the end that I had a bit more work to do. In this case the work involved back-tracking a little to get on the right track, before climbing the actual peak of the mountain, and the taking a sip of water was actually taking a sip of wine, but the basic story is the same.

By creating the exact sweater I set out to create I get the full satisfaction of getting to enjoy my resolve, my stick-to-it-ness, my dedication and my discipline. I feel like a champ looking at this little sweater. Why would I deny myself the pleasure of achieving what I had set out to achieve just because I had an hour or two's more work to do?

When you are starting out as a mountain climber - like in my example at the top of the post - then there might be a case for running screaming out of the mountains when faced with a new peak when you thought you were done. But I am an experienced climber, with years of walking under my belt and mental practice at making sure my mindset is right. I might need a few swear words, a drink of water (wine!!) and a 5 minute sit-down, but I can totally climb that peak. I know I can. I have practice and experience on my side.

Are we connecting our productivity to our self worth?

Why don't want to go backwards? Why are we worried about spending an extra hour or two on this particular project? If we are going to be making anyway, why not keep making this thing to get it right rather than going onto something else?

I've been wondering if part of it is that we are connecting our productivity to our self worth. Our cultural messaging is strong around this stuff. Culturally, achieving is what we are told we are on this earth to do. Achieve stuff, kick goals, accumulate, step forward, onward into the breach. Find what you are good at, and make money out of it. Improve your results, your grades, your fitness, your skills. Always forward, never back.

We live in a culture where busy is bemoaned and yet celebrated as the only way to be. How are you? "Busy" the only acceptable answer. Busy achieving and being a good citizen, "being productive members of society".

Going backwards or even simply inertia, are not really acceptable ways to be. We don't answer with "ahhh, I'm just wandering through at the moment" or "I'm being pretty lazy, not getting much done". I can't remember anyone giving me an answer anything like that for years.

Our cultural programming is strong.

And so what messages have we taken on from this "acceptable" way to be? Do we hear that we are only worthwhile if we are producing stuff with our time and our effort and our materials? Maybe we have internalised these messages to the degree, that the idea of going back makes us feel uneasy? Is it that we can't go backwards because it would mean that we had "wasted all that time" making the mistake in the first place? Wasting as a sign of a non-busy, non-achieving, non-worthwhile human?

Being wasteful does not have good connotations. And that seems to be a big part of why people are horrified to watch someone like me (a ripper) rip a whole sweater out to resuse the yarn. The horror is that we have wasted. all. that. time.

The bigger question for me is why do we believe that we have wasted all that time when we have made a mistake?

Because we haven't. We have learnt what we needed to learn from that project, and rather than keeping the thing as a monument to that learning (like my little sweater with the mistakes), we have traded the time for learning.

Can we think of our time differently?

Could we think of the time we used to make the mistake (not wasted!), as time spent invested in our learning?

Could we even go so far as to think of the time we spent as time invested in our pleasure, the pleasure we had in that moment simply being with our knitting. Not necessarily achieving anything but simply knitting?

Knitting has joy inherent in the doing. If it did not, I would have gone to the shop and purchased her a baby present. There is the joy of sitting with an idea, of combining colours, of feeling yarn in my fingers, of the tension of the yarn, of the neat stitches all in a row. There is joy in that moment. In that moment, when I was making the little sweater I was simply happy, taking simple joy in the making. Can that not be enough? Does it matter that I spent an extra hour or two on the sweater?

Can we reframe our thinking about mistakes and going back?

Could we be happier in our making with a little bit of reframing of how we think about mistakes and going back. Not because we are looking for perfection, but simply because there is beauty to be found in spending time getting to the top of the mountain. Especially when we reframe our failures as learning, as becoming better sailors, and the time we spend as time we have invested in our craft and in ourselves, in the simple pleasure to be found in a moment of making.

I'm not saying it's not ever painful. I am saying that with a little rethinking and reframing and practice we can make it less painful and make with less fear....

Thoughts?

Felicia x

PS. If you are scared of ripping back your knitting then please peruse The Secret To Becoming A Great Knitter. Learning the structure of your knitting is guaranteed to remove some fear.