In pursuit of perfection

It’s a little trite, but it’s a popular saying for a reason - it’s absolutely true.

As knitters, crafters and general creatives we are our own worst enemy when it comes to creating our work. As I type this I’m eyeing up a sweater which has been on my needles for what feels like an eternity - well at least a couple of months. I’m on my third attempt at redoing the neckline. The first was too loose, the second wouldn’t go over my head, so I’m hoping for third time lucky.

These types of redo’s I’ve made peace with. I know from painful experience that not correcting issues of fit will simply condemn my beautiful finished sweater to an unworn decline at the back of my wardrobe where I’ll try to ignore it for as long as physically possible. If you are going to go to all the time and trouble of creating something for you to wear, then you should at least be able to - you know - wear it.

But when I talk about perfectionism this isn’t really what I have in mind. Instead it’s a niggling, deep down conviction that everything leaving your needles must be perfect. Looking at a knitted garment is to view many 1000s of stitches, each executed perfectly, one might even say flawlessly. And yet if there’s one stitch that doesn’t lie flat our eye (or mine at least) is drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

And it’s these tiny flaws that I constantly have to fight the urge to correct. It might be a split stitch, maybe it’s a mis-crossed cable or a missed decrease. Either way it’s small, tiny in the greater scheme of things. And yet time and again my eye will seek it out and fixate on it.

You’ll never notice it from a galloping horse - Unknown

This is a saying that I constantly come back to in deciding whether to fix a mistake or not. Not that I come across many people on galloping horses, but you get the idea.

I’ve come to realise that perfection really is the enemy of done. I can either have something finished or I can have it perfect - I can’t have both.

These days I just tend to forge on and ignore it. Otherwise if I set it aside and then have to make time to go back and fix it, I know there’s a racing certainty that I’ll never pick it up again. Or if I do it will be months after the fact and I’ll be trying to knit an aran sweater in a July heatwave (insert sardonic laugh here for those UK folks currently enjoying the so-called British summer).

And it isn’t just me. Go up to any knitter and compliment them on something they are working on or wearing and nine times out of ten they will feel compelled to point out a minor mistake to you. Often it’s something that you had no chance of seeing, unless you stood rather too close for comfort.

And yet it’s almost as though we can’t accept a compliment without pointing out our flaws. I do wonder whether this is a peculiarly female attribute. Part of our conditioning to deflect praise and not be seen as being boastful or arrogant, but that’s a conversation for another day.

For now I’m going to take advantage of the freezing cold August weather and go and work on that neglected sweater.

How about you? Do you feel you have to correct every tiny error or are you happy to let sleeping stitches lie? Do let me know in the comments.