With mistakes…

I’ve made a mistake in my knitting. It’s not a significant mistake. And honestly, if you didn’t know the pattern, then you probably wouldn’t notice it. Which, I think, is probably the case for almost every single piece I’ve ever knitted. There’s a mistake in every garment.

This used to frustrate me terribly. I would rip the rows back down to the place where the mistake was made, fix it, and then promptly make another. Perfection remained elusive. Which is what perfection does, I guess.

I once knitted a beautiful poncho in a petrol blue shade of dk yarn. It was a *massive* project. Many many hours were poured into it. And the result was really beautiful. Except… when I think of that garment, my first thought isn’t how the growing fabric spread out over my lap, warming me in the depths of a winter spent in a little cottage that clung to the far north edge of Scotland. And it’s not even the warmth I felt when giving it to someone I love and who loves me and who loved what I made for them.

It’s the cool criticism and slightly deflated feeling that washed over me when I spotted one wrong stitch. One wrong stitch out of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. And it was situated roughly in the middle. To have torn it all back down to fix it would have been to have undone months (literally months!) of work. And I couldn’t bring myself to do that.

But even now, when I think of that piece, I think of that wrong stitch. And again the warmth is replaced by the cold judgment of a piece that strived for perfection… and missed its mark.

This part of me – this part that demands and seeks perfection – sits beside a far wiser and more tolerant part that knows that perfection is not for me. It’s not for anyone. Rather, it’s a construct – wholly artificial and, in truth, deadening. So I can either give up knitting, making, writing, loving, living (because I never attain the perfection that ever eludes me). Or, I can embrace the mistakes. I can see them as life-affirming, as generative, as expansive, as divine.

So, yes, I’ve knitted an extra stitch where one shouldn’t have been and I’ve missed making one where I should have. The little hot water bottle cosy that I’m knitting is not going to be perfect. Just like the other two I knitted before this one, each containing their own particular error. But when my son snuggles up and it brings him warmth on a cold winter’s night, taking the chill off the bedclothes and reminding him that he has a mother who loves him, who thinks of him, who cares if he’s warm enough at night, and who knitted him a cosy (mistakes included), he won’t be thinking of the extra stitch, or the missing stitch. He’ll just feel warm… and loved.

And in this way, I gradually release myself from the grip of perfection, and keep knitting, keep making, keep writing, keep loving, keep living. Imperfectly. And with mistakes.