Thursday 24 July 2008

The fine art of doing it wrong.

This morning I got up and decided to just knit for fun.

Knitting for fun can mean socks but today, I was trying to understand a new pattern. It is an intriguing all over pattern called herringbone. On a sweater with a plain dyed yarn, it will bring a little zip and on a sweater with a tweedy yarn, yowza.
The herringbone should be a constantly interrupted, steadily flowing pattern, where every few stitches intersect with the next row slanting across. Nice isn't it?

I sat down to read what should be fairly simple directions. Well they are simple directions. Decrease, knit a few, increase, knit a few, decrease...you get the picture. And then purl back. It should be so simple even a child could do it. Good thing I am not even a child.

Obviously I missed something. There is no intersecting of coolness, there is no steady flow. What we have here is a nice solid angling stitches pattern, but it is not the herringbone I was aiming for. I knew something was wrong when the swatch which should be balanced, had the most alarming lean. But did I try to find out what I was doing?

Heck no. I had to wait till I spent more time knitting. Practise makes perfect, even if what you are practising is wrong. If you are going to do it wrong, you might as well be perfectly wrong.

Practising imperfection is a fine art. So is ripping back. Don't forget to include some of each in your study of the knitting world.







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