By now I am guessing that most of you have seen Julie & Julia, the movie about Julia Child and Julie Powell. Even if you haven’t seen it, you might have seen the original episode of The French Chef where Julia Child flips some potatoes in a pan and talks about the need to have the courage of your convictions when doing something that’s just a little risky.
Last night when I was thinking about what my next blog post should be (over a wonderful dinner with S at Ned Ludd here in Portland) it came to me that a recent experience with my current knitting project had required me to invoke the courage of my convictions too.
A very dear friend is about to embark on a great adventure — heading to Thailand to provide mental health services for refugees. Unable to think of exactly what to do to support her in this endeavor, I decided to knit her a hat to take with her. I chose cotton yarn thinking it might be a bit warmer over there than here, dug around in my voluminous yarn stash for a bit and got started.
The pattern I chose starts at the top with only 4 stitches. After knitting a bit of I-cord, you increase to 8 stitches, move your nascent hat onto 4 double pointed needles, and start knitting around and around, increasing at the end of each needle (adding 4 stitches in every row) until the circumference is as big as you want it to be. At that point you stop increasing and keep knitting until the hat is long enough, cast off and voila! a hat is born.
Pausing at several points along the way to check my gauge (a measure of how many stitches there are to an inch), I calculated that I would need 112 stitches to create a hat of the right size. And so I proceeded merrily along and finished the hat after two evenings in front of the TV. And it was WAY too big. And not really long enough to cover even my ears.
And so here’s where the courage of my convictions part comes in (I know you were wondering about that by now). At this point — after finishing my project (I hesitate to call it a hat) and finding it was not going to work for the person I had made it for I had a few choices.
(1) I could throw it away.
(2) I could give it to someone else.
(3) I could rip it out and start again.
The third option was really the only courageous one, and this gets back to Julia Child and the potatoes. Ripping out knitting is not something to be undertaken timidly. I mean, you can carefully take out every stitch, one at a time, gently moving stitches from one needle to the other as you slip the yarn out of each stitch. Or you can just pull your needles out of your knitting and rip courageously, confident that when you have ripped back as far as you need to go you’ll be able to slide the stitches back onto the needles and start knitting again.
And that’s what I did. I ripped it out. Rows and rows of stitches (well, it was only a hat, so it was not really that many rows, but it felt like a lot of rows when I was ripping). And when I had ripped it back to almost the start, I slid the stitches back onto the needles.
And now I am knitting again.
I’ll let you know when it’s done!
knitting a life 
You brave person, you! I know how hard it is to go back to the beginning, or close to the beginning, and redo. I’ve had to do it with writing, too. Brava!
I humbly suggest a 4th option, elastic!!
Being a non-knitter, I made a huge mistake recently when helping my mom (who is a wonderful knitter). My cat had gotten into a partially knitted shawl and dragged the yarn around a room. This was a shawl I’d started a few years ago, then realized that while I admire knitting, it is not for me. Instead of carefully finding the stitches again and handing it to my mom, I ripped out the entire thing.
Unfortunately, the yarn is very nubbly and I didn’t roll it into a ball as I ripped out the knitting. The result? Huge, ugly tangles.
I absolutely understand what you mean! I took up knitting again after a 15 year hiatus and decided to knit a hat for Zach our 4 yr old. After searching many patterns, I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for so put together two patterns so that I could come up with a black hat with white skulls and cross bones as a repeat around the lower half of the hat and Xs that fleck the top half. After 4 or 5 days of knitting, I topped it off with a cute black and white pom pom and felt super proud of my accomplishment….only to find that when Zach put it on he didn’t like the feel of the wool (he’s used to fleece) and it is TOO SMALL!! What do pirates say??? AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
I, unlike you Liza, have NOT had the courage to disassemble the hat, add a few more rows and at least attempt to make the hat bigger! So, I’ll give it to friend and attemp a new pirate hat for my husband that better fit this time!
I so know what you mean. After all the time and love spent on a project it is so hard to rip it out. I am not a knitter but a crocheter. I recently ripped a sweater out 4 times to get it right. But in the end it was well worth the time. It came out beautifully. If you are a perfectionist like myself you want it right or not at all. Kudos to you!
My first visit to your blog and I really enjoyed this post. =) Julie and Julia was actually the movie that pushed me into blogging! And yes I remember that scene and totally agreed with her on ‘having the courage of your convictions when doing something risky.’ It’s so true! Just imagine if nobody exercised courage of their convictions – nothing moving, beautiful or spectacular would ever happen! Go Julia! hehe