The Zen of Knitting-To Fix a Knitting Mistake – Try Tai Chi!

I can fix most knitting mistakes but the other night, I picked up a lace pattern scarf I was knitting and discovered half the stitches had fallen off the needle. Well, just put

The scarf in question.

them back on, I thought. Pretty easy to fix. However, the yarn was silky and rather slippery so some of the stitches had fallen out totally.

I don’t know if you’ve ever done a lace knitting pattern but this one is pretty easy. You knit one row, then on every other row, you knit 2, do a yarn over, knit 2 together, do a yarn over, knit 2 together, until the last two stitches and knit those two. When I discovered this huge knotty knitting problem, I was on a row with the yarn over, which is very hard to put back correctly, I discovered. What I ended up doing was taking out stitches until I got to a knitted row, then I put them back onto the needle and started repeating the pattern.

OK, big problem. When I had knitted a few rows, I saw that the holes in the lace pattern were huge in the row I’d put back on.I’d already struggled with this for about an our and it was bedtime so I put it aside and figured I’d start again the next night.

So did I mention that this scarf was already about five feet long?!! The prospect of pulling it all out and starting over wasn’t even an option. Plus it is supposed to be a knitted birthday gift for a birthday in September and the person I’m giving it to would definitely notice a mistake, I think. If it was for me, I’d just keep going and, although I’d always see the mistake, I could live with it.

I was very frustrated and aggravated with this whole thing but I started thinking. About a month ago, my husband and I started taking a tai chi class one night a week. Since then, I found another tai chi class at a Y near me and have been going to that one morning a week. What has tai chi got to do with knitting, you ask? In tai chi it isn’t about  quickly learning a routine and then moving on to the next thing. You practice the smallest move over and over, slowly, slowly, until it’s perfect. Every small detail has to be perfected and it doesn’t matter how long it takes. Tai Chi masters spend their entire lives aiming for this perfection.

In tai chi I”m learning the virtue of patience and the ability to consciously focus on the moment. In our hectic daily lives most of us rush through tasks and don’t relax all that much. We rarely slow down to consciously focus on one thing, shutting out all distractions. Even in knitting, I seem to be always rather impatient to finish a project for a birthday or Christmas gift, knitting several projects at a time to keep from getting bored, and always thinking of the next project, buying yarns, planning what I’ll do with them.

In tai chi you don’t get frustrated that you can’t learn faster and move on to the next thing. It sure isn’t about moving faster. The experience is all about perfecting each moment. I’ve been going to yoga classes for about 18 months and it took me a solid year to really feel I’d gotten into the flow of it, allowing muscle memory to take over, getting out of my mind and being in the moment. I knew I could apply all these lessons to knitting and fixing this knitting problem was a good place to begin.

Last night, I picked it up again, focusing on patience. There must be an answer, I thought. I pulled it out a few rows and put it back on the needles. Same result. The lacy holes didn’t look right.Take a deep breath and focus, I thought.

I pulled it out twice more and finally it started to flow again as if there had never been an issue.

I was pretty proud of the whole experience by the time I was finished. I think if I can bring the lessons of patience and focus I’ve learned in tai chi and yoga to my knitting, it will be a more pleasurable experience for it’s own sake, not just for the high I got buying new yarn or finishing a very long project. In the end too, I’m hoping to be more Zen about my entire life, not just when knitting or being in a class. Now that’s a lesson worth learning!

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