Dropping Stitches

I'm learning that life can be an exercise in frustration, quite like dropping a stitch and only realizing several rows after or placing the yarn-over the wrong place in a lace pattern.

A seasoned knitter or crafter knows that these things will happen and as you continue to craft you build up your arsenal of  tricks, techniques and tools to fix them. As a human with emotions you also learn a new range of colourful curse-words to compliment this process.

I would like to think that I've gotten better at bravely facing problems in my knitting; that my tolerance for mistakes raises in tandem with my love for knitting. Further, I originally picked up knitting as a way to relax and learn some patience.

As an odd smile filters across my lips, I can only consider myself blissfully naive. As I immersed myself in knitting it has brought me joy but also despair. It tugs me around like a kite in the wind and often I don't think my skill or my temper is up to its vagaries.

Writing for me is much the same. I get filled with a want to create and the end result is something I think is only fit to be placed under a rock. Being part of a society whose focus seems solely on success and or monetary viability; the things floating through my mind don't seem worth the time it would take to lasso them and put them down on paper.


Unlike the calming feeling of making lists on Anne, seeing the poor representation of my dreams in text does little to lift my morale. Writing is the only artistic medium I have to bring my much beloved characters to life; I'm not going to suddenly realise that I am very good at drawing or painting - and those would also have moments when you are up against a wall.

In the same way, knitting is my craft of choice. If I fail there, it feels as if all hope is lost.

But then I ask myself, what am I doing? How can failure seep into it when I started this for myself with no expectations. I have hopes of designing that seem increasingly unreachable. I want to finish a novel and that seems like a sick joke with my ego as the butt of it.


I hardly believe this as I'm writing it but I will continue to press on. You can't craft in a vacuum but you can't let other people supply all of your confidence. Some of it has to come from with-in.

I'm not going to give in because of a few dropped stitches. I can do better than that. And when they happen I've got my crochet hook ready to put them back in the proper place.