I've been knitting, really I have, just not taking pics. I have a sock almost done (cast it on the last Friday of the Olympics)....

I've been thinking about the issue of perfection.

I was talking to a knitter who told me that she'd ripped a bag destined for felting several times, as she wanted it to be perfect, and then got bored of messing with it and so was working on something else.

I have been working really hard to move away from this perfection thing. For me, it stops me cold from being able to FINISH stuff, a significant portion of the time. I don't want tons of UFOs sitting around, so I'm trying to regard a finished (though imperfect) object as intrisically superior to an (as yet perfect) unfinished one.

I really don't care (hardly at all) if an increase that should have been left-facing is right-facing (especially with a yarn that is visually busy! :-) ), and I don't care at all if I decrease down a heel with an odd number of stitches on the bottom and an even number on the back. I don't care at all if one sock is a couple of rows longer than its mate, and I don't count the rows, I just hold the second one up to the first....

Once upon a time I was a student at the potters' guild, and there was a significant divergence between the people who felt that you weren't a Real Potter if you coulnd't make six identical cylinders, and the people who thought you were nuts to try -- seeing as how you weren't a machine and all, why would you WANT to make a bunch of identical things as a machine would???

I completely understand the desire not to look like a technical nincompoop, and I confess that I, by nature, come down on the side of being too fussy and picky and wanting things Just So. On the other hand, I often don't have the will to do things over and over and over to get them to *be* Just So. If I'm going to insist on perfection, I'm going to actually FINISH only a few things. That's not the way I want the overall picture to look -- how will I know which heel I *really* like, if I never wear any socks to rags? How will I know how a given yarn holds up in use, if I never make anything that can actually be used?

And then there is the aspect of this that has to do with Just Making the Work. I am 100% convinced that a person can make more really excellent work if she makes a lot of work than if she just makes a few things that she has done and re-done and re-re-done. I want to finish more stuff so I can have more finished stuff, and so I can learn what I will learn from *finishing* rather than dithering.

So one of my self-improvement projects is reminding myself that Perfect is the Enemy of Finished, and that FINISHING something (even if imperfect) is morally superior to putting a potentially-perfect-and-unfinished item in drawer, a bag, a closet, and leaving it there to languish (probably forever).

I think about all the people in centuries past who, if they didn't make socks for their families, had children with really cold feet. Did they care if the increases faced the "right" way? I doubt it. Did they care if one sock was longer than the other? Did they care if their 2x2 ribbing came out exactly right, rather than having a place where there were three knits or purls? I doubt it. Not if it stood in the way of finishing the sock. Especially when the "error" wouldn't interfere with the function of the finished item.....

So I'm concentrating on finishing socks, rather than on whether I really increased every second, third, second, third row up the calf.

And I'll try to put up a pic tomorrow. Hope I like how this Sockotta yarn holds up over time -- I surely like how some of it looks when knit up!!!!!