Now You See It, Now You Don't

Do you see that? Where I messed up my stitches? It's so obvious.

At least to me.

I once had a knitter tell me that if you couldn't see the mistake, while galloping past on a horse, it wasn't worth fixing.  That sounds great, except I will always know it's there.  And when I look at the finished product, my eyes will go straight to the mistake — no matter what the rest of the knitting looks like. Everyone else may see miles and miles of beautiful stitches and yet all I'll focus on are the four rows where I didn't carry my yarn up the side properly.  Probably because I wasn't paying attention, kept knitting, and it wasn't until yesterday that I hit that "Oh crap" moment. (When you're working with pretty yarn, it's hard not to be mesmerized and fall into a fiber induced trance. And I'm using yarn from SpaceCadet Creations, which is VERY trance inducing.)

In knitting there is this awesome concept called 'tink'ing.  It's a knitting do-over.  T-I-N-King — it's knitting in reverse (get it?) It's a way to go back and fix the mistake. Ask another knitter "should I tink back?" and the answer will inevitably be "is it going to bother you?" Some knitters are fine with it, figuring it adds to the uniqueness and makes it their own. Me? I'm not one of those knitters and I WILL focus on the mistake. I try to convince myself that it doesn't matter, that no one will notice, that you wouldn't be able to see it riding past on a horse. But I don't usually wear my knitting near a stable.

And so I tink. Back to correct the mistake, knowing that I will be more aware of how I made it and watch to make sure I don't do it again.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to tink back in life? So that instead of focusing on all the mistakes I've made over the past half century, I could correct, learn, and not do them again?

Now, truth be told, there are times in knitting, when tinking is no longer a viable option — you can only rip back the same yarn so many times before it starts showing the stress, and the best thing to do is start over again, at a different point in the skein.

Not too different in life I guess. Sometimes you have to let it go and say "well, that just made things more interesting" and at other times all you can do is know the mistake is there, learn from it and move on. I have yet, though, to figure out how to go back and start again, at a different point in life, when I keep making the same mistake over and over.

So for now, I'll have to be content with the do-over opportunity knitting gives me, knowing in the end I'll be happy with the results ... whether or not I wear it to the Kentucky Derby. 

Much better...