Every personality test I’ve ever taken inevitably determines that one of my defining qualities is loyalty, not unlike a dog. I ride or die; I go down with the ship. Often, it’s brands, friendships, routines, my own convictions. Less often boys and what other people think I should do. The number one thing I am most loyal to, my personal north star, is my own punishing sense of perfectionism.
Considering my inability to let go, I find myself white-knuckling through life, most of the time. A few years ago, I took up knitting as a hobby, as a way to try to turn off my brain. (Idle hands, and so on.) I started small: small needles, small yarn, small projects. I made at least fifteen versions of the same hat, the stitches as tightly wound as a spring loaded coil. You could launch a rocket. Last fall, I was served a TikTok of a designer making her own cable knit sweater in a shocking shade of lime and knew it was time to graduate. Serendipitously, an old coworker gave me his mom’s extra knitting needles, so I bought a dozen skeins of yarn and got going.
I didn’t read the pattern closely enough and cast on a medium-sized sweater, which I realized too late was a touch oversized for me. The fabric tension was all over the place, and it didn’t drape the way I’d hoped. It was the first sweater I ever made, and I was unhappy with my own creation, despite the hours put in and my cramping hands. No matter, I started in on a second sweater in the same pattern but a size down. In the end, I unraveled and redid each sweater five times but eventually started knitting out of muscle memory. One I gave away, the other I decided to scrap the pattern entirely. I freehanded two vests instead because I was so sick of looking at the yarn and needed to exorcise myself of it.
Needlework is forgiving because the yarn itself is a renewable resource. You can knit, unravel, knit, unravel, ad infinitum. Pottery is similar, but I once sliced open both of my thumbs at the wheel, with one of the many sharp tools. Sewing, on the other hand, makes scraps out of the fabric, and it will never be whole again. Knitting is ideal for me, a person who struggles to know when, if ever, to cut their losses. If a piece is even slightly imperfect, I will torch it and start again, from the very beginning. And isn’t that what we all need — a little forgiveness.
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