wwyd?

(the un-post from yesterday)

Part 1: some thoughts about knitting, lace, and life.
Part 2: a knitting dilemma within the lace.

Both full of rambles.
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Part 1:

The suggestion to cast-on a lace project? Genius. I am definitely having a seashell, kind of Gift From The Sea, sort of moment with my knitting right now. I love it when I can knit along, noticing the parallels between what is in my hands and what is happening in my life.


One topic of discussion as of late, with TheMIG, has been about intimacy, and how each of us defines it. We have different definititions, go figure (although I think we've determined that they do not appear to be entirely at odds with one another).

For me, having intimacy in a relationship inlcudes some form of knowing/understanding/loving/supporting, all of the parts that comprise who I am as a person. But it also means having an awareness of how the seemingly separate parts of my life relate to one another (and it goes both ways--I want to be able to see the same things about you, too).

Imagine some sort of schematic. My life could be a drawn as a bunch little boxes, each of them representing one of the many roles I fill. Partner, mother, lover, dancer, teacher, friend, family member, volunteer, etc.

Some people only know me as just one of those roles. I believe it is entirely possible for a person to feel an intimate connection with me, even though they only have access to just one of the boxes. For example, people whom I perform with, but whom I do not know outside of the "dance box"...I would say that some of us do share an intimate relationship with one another, in relation to dance. We experience a profound connection or understanding of one another through movement. There is a depth of knowing.

It is an entirely different type of relationship for me, however, when I have a person who has access to many, most, or ALL of my "boxes". And it is extremely special to me when someone who knows about all of the boxes has a working understanding about how all of those boxes are interconnected.

That's the schematic part.
You see, there are little web-like lines connecting the roles in my life. If I come from a day of volunteering at the convalescent hospital and I have a bunch of feelings about being there...well, they may end up being filtered into a choreography. If you knew about both the volunteer box and the dance box, and could mabye see the lines. If you knew about even more boxes, you'd see that my volunteer work is not only generating seeds for creativity, but it is also affecting how I see myself and my disability, how I see my family members, how I see political activism, yadda yadda yadda...you get the picture.

If you have an understanding about all of my boxes, and if you see the integration and connections between them, as I do, I feel you will have a deeper, more intimate understanding of who I am. In my personal definition of intimacy, we will have a more intimate relationship. It has something to do with feeling "seen", and I am sure "understood". There is a whole 'nother bit about how my boxes probably have lines connecting to your boxes...but that's a whole 'nother discussion.

Now, there really is not one box in my life that isn't connected to every other box. I do not believe that I have a single function of my self that stands alone. In fact, some might argue that I might even be a little bit overly integrated. I've never been the type to check my life in at the door when going to work, and vice-versa, sometimes to my demise.

So. How it relates to knitting.

In my mind, my life (normally/on a good day), looks like a nice organized schematic, with skinny little lines connecting my boxes, almost creating and openwork sort of spiderweb (ummm...like LACE??). But there is so much going on in my life right now, if you look at the schematic of my life, it's got a whole lotta big fat marker lines connecting the boxes. Everything is affecting everything. For a few weeks there, life was not looking like a spiderweb, but more like some sort of smothering cocoon. In addition to big fat connecting lines, there were just too many damn lines. It seemed that the lines were even going back and forth and repeating in layers. The lines connecting the different parts of me were so intertwinded, I couldn't see between them. There was no negative space. I could barely move without one thing affecting another, and I became fairly immobile (ummm...like knitting with worsted wool on US#3's maybe?).

Starting the shawl has been a saving grace. It's repetitive, but not mindless. There is something grounding about occasionally counting stitches when coming back on the purl side...almost like chanting. As I work, intricate beauty falls from my hands. Lace is organized. It's complex. But in some ways it is quite simple. There is something there about the order of things. Lace makes sense. All of the shapes and the open spaces line up. There is negative space...spaces between the shapes. There is form in the positive spaces--shapes in between the spaces. The twisting of the yarnovers....they have somehow reminded me to find both the spaces and the healthy connections between my boxes and their intereconnecting lines. There is room in there.
When you hold lace up to the sun, there is daylight.

It is grand.



Except now I have a lace boo-boo and I have to rip some of the shawl out. But that's okay. This shawl has clearly become process knitting. I don't mind a re-do (except I worry about overworking the yarn). But the question about ripping back now begs the ongoing question about my need for perfection.

So on to Part 2 of this post...
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Part 2:
WWED??
(What Would Eunny Do?)
there a many of lace worthy knitters out there, but Eunny had a good ring to it ;-)

Here is a section of the shawl, on it's 6th repeat. There are mistakes. See them?

Let me say a few things about this lace before I point out the mistakes:

This is not my first lace.
I've knit lace socks, two Branching Out scarves, and (I hate to even mention my lonely unfinished symbol of failure) the Knitting Olympics Shawl (of Shame) was lace, too.
This shawl is easy lace.
This pattern was touted as being good for beginners or a relaxing joy-ride for those with experience. It really is. I'm beyond needing the chart (it's a very easy repeat) and it is very easy for me to look a the stitches and read the flow of the pattern.

In every lace project I have worked on though, I always make the same mistake, and this shawl is proving no different.

When I'm purling back on the wrong-side...when I'm supposed to knit the first two stiches of that row and the last two stitches of that row, to make that tidy little border...I always forget to knit those last two stitches.

When I was doing the Branching Out scarves I finally just threw in a stitch marker so I would trip over it every time I got to that point in the row. But I thought I'd outgrown making that error and was fine without using one for the shawl. I swear to you, I checked the border of the shawl every repeat for that exact error and didn't see the mistakes. Maybe there are evil knitter elves coming in and night and messing with it (they should drop the knitting and go clean my kitchen).

Anyhow, I found the mistakes late at night. I spent quite awhile deciding if I could live with them, and let go of needing all things in life to be perfect. Before you ask...no, I don't feel I could drop down and fix them. One stitch is an edge stitch, and I don't know how to drop down on an edge stitch, and the other stitch is next to a yarnover. Seems like a royal pain in the arse, if you ask me.

In a moment of self-acceptance, I concluded that I could live with the errors, and let them go....throw in a stitch marker to trip over while working on the rest of the shawl, and move on. Letting go of the mistakes, let me tell you, is a very different response for me than my normally anal self. But the body of the lace looks great, and the errors seemed relatively unnoticeable, even to me.

And so there I was... happily letting go my internal struggle with perfectionism.

And that's when I turned the knitting over and saw this.

Hmmm.

Now, I've been looking and looking and looking at this little loop, and I am pretty damn sure it was caused by a tension problem. I think that somehow I just didn't pull up the slack on a stitch or something. There is no dropped stitch, no hanging yarn over. The lace pattern has been examined, and it is on track. This little loop just "ended up here". The elves did it. I just didn't see it because I've only been examining the front of my work, and not the back (good lesson).

This little loopy-loo is only 1 repeat back and, because I am anal, I have a lifeline in there. Of course the mistake is two rows below the lifeline. How lame is that. But still. Not a huge deal. I don't have any big stress about ripping or tinking or whatever it is I need to do to go back far enough to fix the loop.

But here's what IS gnawing at me:
I am now struggling with the compelling urge to rip back beyond the 1 repeat to fix the loopy-loo....and to go all the way back to the 2nd repeat and fix the edge stitch issue, too. Might as well, if I'm ripping, I might as well rip, right?

On one hand it feels like allowing my perfectionism to win, on the other hand, it feels like who cares...more process knitting could be good. But the question of whether to rip or not rip has had me sitting here NOT knitting on the shawl for 3 days now.
And that's stoooopid.

So now what?
What Would YOU Do?