When my children were first learning to skate, I took them to a community rink for a lesson. They spent the entire first lesson falling onto the ice, flopping onto the ice, protected by their snowpants and jackets, and learning to get up. “On your hands and knees and bark like a dog,” the teacher commanded. “One knee up, and then the other.” Brilliant teaching. Everyone falls at least once, and if you can’t get up, you’ll never learn to skate.
Kind of like knitting. Unless you learn how to fix mistakes, you’ll never learn to knit — or you won’t learn to enjoy knitting. Mistakes are inevitable. Like these purl stitches that I discovered on this sweater for a colleague’s baby-to-be.
I didn’t notice the errant purls until a few rows later, of course. With a crochet hook, good lighting, and a few calming breaths, I slipped the stitches of each vertical row, one by one, and then “re-knit” them with the hook.
Until each purl had been turned into a knit. Problem solved. Move on to the next row.
March 29, 2017 at 8:23 am
[…] often about important it is for knitters to learn to spot their mistakes and figure out how to remedy them. I firmly believe that one won’t become a Fearless […]
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December 9, 2016 at 8:03 am
[…] always when I teach new knitters, a first lesson is to spot and then fix mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable, and if you can’t fix them, you’re more likely to give […]
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November 5, 2016 at 7:22 pm
[…] written before about the inevitability of mistakes in knitting and about the many mistakes I’ve made in a variety of projects. Learning to fix […]
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March 5, 2013 at 3:50 am
Just looking at the middle picture raises my blood pressure!
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March 1, 2013 at 10:29 pm
I love your phrase “calming breaths” that is the perfect description of just how you feel when you discover a mistake 4 rows back !
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