Lots of new projects in the past week or so.
To start, a rug. Just inside our porch door is a scrap of carpet, that works fine but has a tattered edge that snarls in the vacuum cleaner. Last fall at Taos, I had a class with Donna Druchunas, and also picked up her Knitted Rug book. This is her log cabin rug, in some Paton's Shetland Chunky Tweed. It wouldn't have been my first choice, being a bit too plastic, but it was available here in town.
Next is a swatch. I've been fascinated lately by baby stuff, despite not having any babies to knit for. But when I found 3 skeins of superwash wool fingering weight, white with pink, blue, and yellow spots, at a yarn store last week, I bought it. It's a yarn store I'm not that crazy about. The only reasons I go are that it's close to one of the motels where I often stay, and they have a good candy bowl at the counter. As I was checking out, I found myself thinking I was rescuing the yarn, rather than buying it.
Finally there's the Clock Vest. It's from 'Folk Vests', out of Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool. This sweater kicked my butt big time when I started. First I had to go down about 3 needle sized to make gauge, then didn't have needles small enough to do the border, so had to upsize. A few inches up, it became clear I was going to have to find someone to wear it with me, it was coming out so big. So rip back, start over, decreasing the stitch count for the border and keeping the same needle size throughout. I'd show pictures, but 3 inches of sweater just doesn't photograph well.
I was frustrated with this for a long time. It didn't help that about the time I started, Devorah cast on the same vest. She's since finished it, ripped it out because it was too big, re-knitted it, and finished it. I've gotten about 2 inches into the body. But I've reached the point where the pattern flows. I made lots of mistakes when I was reading it as 'slip the next 2 needles to a cable needle and hold to the front of the work, purl one from.........". Charting it helped, as I had an easier time putting the stitches in the right place when I could see where they were coming from and where they were headed. Finally I've reached the point where I'm seeing it as 'a 2 stitch band and a 1 stitch band, both move one to the left this row' and do just that without having to look at the chart again 'til the next row.
I needed to be reminded of this. I have a way of learning things that isn't efficient, isn't quick, and isn't elegant. I can forget something I've heard faster than I can write it down. Details frustrate me, until I've mastered concepts. Once I have though, the details that I previously couldn't grasp are obvious.
The other reminder I got of this happened in church choir. I love singing. And we've got a really good choir. But I've been on the verge of quitting, because with my minimal musical education, I don't learn the music easily. I'm not helped by the alto who sits next to me, who I think is trying to be helpful by frequently telling me what page we're on in the hymnal, when to stand, sit, kneel, sing unison or parts, process or recess, exit the choir area for communion, etc. (That's actually one of my favorite parts of the service. Having never been baptized, I don't take communion, and one of the basses and I hang out in the vestry together telling jokes until the rest of the choir returns.) But instead of helping, she's distracting me from finding my place.
This week we sang Jean Berger's 'The Eyes of All'. It seemed familiar when we first read it. And after just a few repetitions, I found I only needed to glance at the music for reminders of a couple of notes. Yesterday I pulled out my old cassette tapes and played one from an undergraduate choir concert. There it was. I knew the piece because I'd had to memorize it for a performance........in 1993. I learned it then. And now, over 13 years later, it's still mine.
I need these reminders now and then. In the midst of frustration, disorganization, and what sometimes appears as chaos, there is learning. I need to remember that. Instead of giving up, or berating myself for not learning things the way I think I should, or expecting someone else to somehow magically make it clear to me, I need to honor my own abilities. I need to remember that I learn by repetition. By making mistakes. By looking at something so many times from so many directions that by the time I'm done, there's almost nothing I don't know about it. And by trusting that as overwhelming as the process sometimes feels, it will happen.
What does this have to do with knitting? Well, I probably start 3 or 4 times as many things as I finish. And some of the stuff I do finish has been knitted a couple of times by the time I'm done. Projects get started and abandoned because of details I didn't recognize when I started. The yarn isn't right, it's boring, or it just doesn't look as good as I'd hoped. Despite how I often feel, there's nothing wrong with that. That's just the way I work.