On Perfection

or the lack thereof

This morning, My Old Man gave Little Buddha his usual breakfast - a banana and Cheerios. But the banana had broken into two pieces. "Oh no!" Little Buddha said, when he saw it. Then he burst into tears. (We gave in and got him another one). I get it, little man, I really do. I have OCD, too. I know what it's like to want things to be just so, and I know how devastating it is when they are not that way. Perfection is so elusive in real life - who can fault us for wanting it in small doses, wherever we can find it? Like an unbroken banana.

Or a piece of knitting.

One of the things I love about knitting, as opposed to the rest of life, is that you can go back and correct your mistakes. You get a Do Over as many times as you need.

This is also one of the things I hate about knitting. I don't like to do things over. I like to do them once and have them done. Which leaves me in a quandary when confronted with a mistake. Leave it and live with it (i.e., let it drive me crazy)? Or, go back and fix it (i.e., lose all the time I've already put into it)?

Exhibit A.


I wish I knew how to draw on my pictures, like people with PhotoShop do. I have iPhoto and have no idea how to draw on pictures, so I can't put the little arrows or circles in to show you what the problem here is. This is Sock #1 of the pair I'm making for my KH Sock Pal ("Fancy Silk Socks" from Knitting Vintage Socks). If you look at the lace pattern near the gusset, you can see - there is supposed to be a small stretch of stockinette - 3 sts - and then the lace pattern. But I have two small sets of stockinette - 3 sts, then a purl line, then 3 more sts.

This lace pattern is on a 12-round repeat. Once you get to the instep, you end up not doing a full repeat at the very end, but instead only doing 5 sts (instead of 8). For every round, the first 5 sts are: p1, k3, p1. Well, for every round except for one. On the 9th round, it's p1, yo, sl1, k2tog, psso, yo, p1. Only I didn't do that. I just kept doing p1, k3, p1 for those last 5 sts, including on round 9. Which means the edges of the sock are mismatched - on the right side of the sock, the pattern continues down the instep, but on the left side I just have this blank little stretch of stockinette.

I can't give these to another knitter with this mistake in it (especially since I cannot let myself keep making this mistake down the rest of the foot, and I certainly can't make myself make this same mistake with the next sock). I'm trying to figure out if there's some way to repair without ripping back 24 rounds, by just dropping the 3 sts where the mistakes are, and letting them drop out 24 rounds down. But I'm not sure I can make that work, especially since I don't have a crochet hook small enough for this fingering weight yarn. I suppose I can try it and if it doesn't work, then I can rip. Gah. I'm really aggravated. I hate ripping fingering weight yarn and then trying to get it back on size 1 needles (did this once with this sock already, when I discovered I had not decreased the gusset sts down far enough). And I'm irritated that I made such a stupid and completely avoidable mistake. In my defense, I am home sick, with the double whammy of bronchitis and sinusitis, and in my weakened state probably shouldn't be allowed to hold needles or decipher patterns.

Sickness cannot be my defense in this next bit of imperfection.


This is the Men's Zippered Raglan from LMKG. Originally this was to be a Christmas gift for My Old Man, but too many other projects got in the way. Then it was going to be an anniversary gift, but I don't think that'll work either, because of a certain other project that is taking more time than it should (see above). This knit is going fine, except for the variegation of the yarn. You know how when you're knitting with variegated yarn, some people advise you to alternate balls every row or so, since there are no dyelots and each skein can vary from the other? That seemed like too much fuss for me, so I didn't bother. Now I've discovered that the beautiful jewel blue shade of this Malabrigo is streaked with major amounts of white in some of the skeins. So the bottom several inches of the sweater are exactly the color I wanted. Then you can see the field of white, where I started a new and very different skein (even my mom, a non-knitter, noticed and asked "How did you get the white stripe in there?"). After several rows, I got disgusted and put that skein away and tried a different one. It had less white but not as much blue as the first. Finished that skein and am now back to the one that has tons o' white (perhaps you can see the white beginning at the point where I am in the sleeve now).

I know with variegated yarn you can't have perfectionist expectations, at least not with how the color blips come out. Theoretically, I suppose I should've ripped and started varying the yarn once I realized how drastically different certain parts would look. But I'm just going to try to live with it. Maybe once the whole thing is done, I won't notice?

Ha. Fat chance. To quote Little Buddha: "Oh no! Waaaaaah!"