Lessons in life through knitting

Most recently, since my grandson was born I have taken up knitting again.  My mother taught me when I was very young how to knit, follow a pattern and understand the craft.  I am a good knitter and know how to follow a pattern.  So I knit Hunter a sweater earlier this year.  It should fit him this winter and he will look terrific in it.  As I was working on the edges there were a couple of times where I knit where I should have purled.  Darn! But really it makes no difference to the function or the purpose of the sweater, I just know they are there.  Most wouldn't notice, but I do.  I chose not to go back and fix them. I call them Gramma's mistakes.

So now I am in Bella Coola and I decided to knit another sweater.  I picked up some wool from the local Co-op store and searched out a pattern on the internet and began.  It is a lovely pattern but also just some straight knitting.  As I looked back over my work I found one of "Gramma's mistakes". Darn!  Well that is okay the person I am making this for, while not my grandchild, will likely never notice as it is not that visible to the overall eye, but again I know it is there.  Then lo' and behold, one of "Gramma's mistakes" made it right smack dab into the middle of the back panel.  I could not avoid fixing it.  It was just too obvious!  So I undertook to drop the six stitches of the pattern down about 2" of knitting and fix the mistake.  I couldn't do it!  I had to rip it back~ again, darn.

So I tore out 2" of knitting which is about two full patterns in order to go back and fix my mistake.  I did it inadvertently and without realizing it but I had to go back and fix it.  I could have left it and it would have bugged me as log as this sweater is around, so I chose to go back and fix it.  I tried to short cut it and fix it without taking all stitches back to that row but again it was better to just tear it out and begin fresh before the mistake was made.

Don't we wish life was like that?  Don't we wish we could tear out the years, days, hours or minutes between when we made the mistake and make it right, like it never happened?  But even so I would have known I made it and had to go back to make it right. Only in sharing it in this blog will anyone ever know I made that mistake, however, the one I did not go back and fix is still there.  So it reminds me, I do make mistakes and some can be fixed and others cannot.  Some mistakes just alter a pattern others ruin the sweater, all in all 'tis life.

Here I bear my "Gramma's mistake" in this sweater which I chose to leave to remind my friend that I am human and make mistakes.  The sweater will still keep her warm and she will know I prayed love into every stitch, even when I knitted when I was supposed to purl and even when I totally forgot to pull the stitches from the front to the back when I should, all in all 'tis life ... the grace of forgiving ourselves of our mistakes is part of the whole picture and the grace of letting others know we make them gives them a chance to forgive also.