If anyone follows "The FlyLady" you know the expression "Housework not done perfectly still blesses the family". It's a way of getting rid of the perfectionism that paralyzes many people from even trying.
Today, I was scanning my Yahoo groups, and one is devoted to a lace designer. Someone posted they had finished a shawl of their own design, for a new granddaughter. I clicked to see the pictures on Flickr. Something just didn't look right in a couple pictures, then I came to a close up. I could see immediately that there was major errors in the middle row of three rows of a large pinecone design. Not just a forgotten yarn over, but each pinecone in the row was wrong. It's very obvious as it's a large scale pattern, and the first and last row are correct (I don't mean row 1 and 3 of the pattern, I mean rows 1 and 3 of whole motifs, each motif is probably 24 rows). This might not have shown up during knitting, due to the large number of sts on the needles and the nature of lace, but wow, it shows up in the blocked product.
I would be so heartbroken to see this during blocking. I don't think I could post the pictures to a group with over 3000 members. I see errors in my knitting all the time, and it is a challenge deciding what I can live with and what I can't; I often use Rob as my judge.
However, the grandbaby won't be able to spot these errors. Knitting done imperfectly still blesses the receiver. Knit on.
4 comments:
I once crocheted an afghan for my mil & she was told there was a mistake in it (row 2!) that I hadn't found until I was finishing it & that she would only be allowed to take it home with her, if she could NOT find the mistake. My dh assured me that Japanese artists put in mistakes on purpose! The afghan was made as a mesh & then you wove in stripes going the other way to make it plaid. I have a picture in my fb Crafts album (can't remember if you are on my fb friend list or not - if now, welcome to add me!). The picture doesn't show the mistake & I have no idea if she has the afghan still or not. I hadn't taken a picture before giving it to her in 1981, but was able to do so about 14 years later while visiting.
I think your last sentance summed it up ;)
heeh I always post what I did, mistakes and all, but I know that everyone makes mistakes and no-one is perfect even if they only show the perfect stuff.
The thing is, it encourages people to show their work more and even get into MK'ing when they see that mistakes do happen :)
Don't be so hard on yourself, mistakes or not, if you created something, share it :)
I can't recall knitting something with such a large, obvious error. I know the blankets I did for the babies in the family, had errors, but I don't think they were as obvious as this lady's blanket. I do leave small errors in my work, and I'm about to post about a shawl I just did that has some errors. I do try to write about the projects that just didn't work (although not always in a timely manner), and I almost always post about my trials and fustrations, esp. with machine knitting. However, I don't have 3000+ readers, LOL. What surprised me is that the lady never mentioned anything about the odd motif section. Did SHE not see it? Or maybe she hopes no one else sees it? If it was me, I would have written a long entry about the mistake, the hows and whys, etc. Perhaps I don't need to do that.
haha I see your point and agree.
Yeah, I do make a point of talking about my mistakes also.
Now you have said it like that, it does seem funny to post it and not mention it :)
haha unless.... maybe she designed it to be that way? LOL
stranger things... haha :)
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