I’ve been practicing my lace knitting technique by making little lace swatches to show what my yarn looks like in use, and I’ve noticed that it does not look like the pictures in the books. Not surprising, this, because I am far from a perfect knitter. My short-term memory is deteriorating these past years, and I can look at the pattern in the book and forget what I looked at by the time I go to knit it. Plus it’s been a fact all my life that perfection and I don’t get along; I won’t wear anything white, for example, because the color white gets dirty the minute I even look at it. If I try to make a project “perfect,” then I’ll be spending my entire life on one project and never do anything else, and that doesn’t work for me.
Fortunately there is a common folk belief that the gods will be jealous if a crafter makes anything perfect, so one has to deliberately install a “mistake” in one’s work to prevent that. I can’t imagine having to manufacture mistakes, but this gives me an “out” I guess.
So of course my knitting doesn’t look like what’s in the book.
The other reason, of course, is that I’m using handspun yarn, which is not perfectly smooth and even like machine-milled yarn is. Now let me explain that I don’t do “art” yarn. Yes, my yarn is art, but I don’t deliberately exaggerate the inconsistency; I am trying, actually, to make the yarn as straight and even as I possibly can. I want to leave just enough variation in to make the finished project just a little bit interesting in its imperfection, even when it’s knitted with perfection. Thus even perfect knitters will not have to fear the wrath of the gods.
You’re welcome.
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