The Road Between Negative and Positive

I'm working on a proposal for a class for the store. If the ladies accept it, I am going to be thrilled.

It means I have to knit up some perfectly delightful samples, samples that could be looked at by students and touched and felt from the inside out. They must be practically perfectly proper knitting, no short cuts, no oops, no well that isn't going to show.

Which is where the real problem comes in. I don't know if my knitting is up to it. There are things that I would accept on the inside of my knitting, where no one else will look, that other people will laugh at or find exceedingly odd. I don't worry a lot if my socks are perfectly matched. If an increase along the heel is missing, I take care of it on the next row. Its a sock and no one will see.

My knitting has a distinct style. I'm a loosely goosey knitter. There are some things I won't put up with and that will always be corrected.

There are places for perfection, don't get me wrong. There just isn't a lot of room to hide things in lace when the shape of the negative space is so important a feature. I wouldn't tolerate a bad error in a colourwork project, unless I could correct it later with a little duplicate stitch embroidery, but on the whole, some things can be fudged. I have a theory, going back far into my past and finely tuned in my embroideries, that it isn't so much doing it perfectly that counts, it is doing it and knowing which mistakes can be hidden, and which ones can't that makes the difference.

Unless people are going to see it from the wrong side. Then magically, I'd better be prepared to have some seriously fine knitters out there look at it and decide me and my attempt at taking their knitting in a new direction, are worth their time. A person ought to be able to look at the sample and see only the thing I am trying to show in the sample.

So I'm trying to be a good knitter and I am trying to colour inside the lines today, no fudging, no excuses, no handy platitudes. Its an exercise in patience. Its an exercise in seeing the mistakes rather than glossing over. Its an exercise in finding fault and seeing fault as way to learn about doing better. Its an exercise in seeing error as a friend and a teacher.

Writing through it this morning has changed my mind. I'm not looking at the day of samples with trepidation, I'm looking forward to it. If I look at it as a lesson in taking a negative and turning it into a positive, it becomes an adventure not just about knitting but life.