Wednesday, October 05, 2005

imperfect thoughts

Last winter I put aside the sweater I'd started, from Elsebeth Lavold's book of Viking knits, using her Silky Wool. I was making little mistakes in the pattern, which has simple cables plus reappearing cabled motifs going on. The motifs were giving me trouble. One looks like it has the knit version of a sneeze in it.

I decided its time to finish the back, flaws and all. Here's why : Leonard Cohen says it better than I can:
Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything-
that's how the light gets in.

It turns out Cassie also has some thoughts on perfection and it's limiting qualities, earlier today. She says it better than I can. too.
Assuring myself that noone will ever mistake me for a perfectionist, I finished the back. torgeirback This here is a good argument for doing the back first. The little mess-ups occur mostly in the bottom half . If you notice them, I'll need to inquire why you're staring so closely at my husband's sweatered butt.

By the time I got to the shoulders I concluded the problem is with the " left lifted increase" and "right lifted increase" move. It keeps vexingly becoming a yarnover in effect. I think the way I usually do knit stitch, through the back loop, is gumming things up. Clearly Elsebeth is a front of the loop knit stitcher, done that way the increase stitch seems to behave itself within the motif. I'm knitting the front of the sweater using a front of the loop knit stitch and we'll see if that takes care of it.
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praying
Is it not perfect to end with this creature, when yesterday was Rosh Hashana ( the Jewish New Year) and the start of Ramadan too?

1 comment:

Tracy Batchelder said...

I'm learning not to focus too closely on the details, but to concentrate on the whole. A small mistake is almost never noticed unless you look at each stitch individually. I'm choosing not to be a perfectionist these days and it feels good.