"We've been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can't live that way" (Natasha Bedingfield)

Sometimes the only way to not make a mistake, is to have made it previously.

When I started knitting, I used to worry about making mistakes, I would become frustrated with myself when I dropped a stitch. Initially my fear was that I wouldn't be able to correct my mistakes, so I felt foolish for making them, like no-one else ever made mistakes. 

Several times, rather than ask for help, I would even unravel the entire piece of knitting rather than admit I had made a mistake. I would rather rip it up and start again, than reach out to someone who could help me. This was particularly true if it was not the first time I had made the mistake.

We've forgotten all the times we fell down when we were learning to walk. But we need to have just as much patience with ourselves now as our parents did then when we learn something new. We  have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and encourage ourselves. Try again.  

With time we learn which mistakes we need to fix, the ones that left unattended would cause our work to unravel, and which mistakes are so minor that we can ignore them. The minor mistakes that we can make peace with,  embellish with a button or a patch, or even turn into a feature of our work.

We learn first to reach out and ask for help, from someone who has been there and made that mistake themselves. Over time, we learn to fix it ourselves, to pick up that dropped stitch, to pull back a few rows if needed. With practise we come to recognise the signs when we are about to make that mistake, and we can avoid making it in the first place.

And if we learn how to fix our mistakes and how to pick ourselves (and not just our dropped stitches) back up, we can knit on because we know we will handle it!

Purlgirl xx