today, after having planned to do so for some weeks, I printed out all 24 of my scholarly publications, starting from the oldest book reviews from graduate school (one in this international tech comm journal and one over here), all the way up to my most recent conference proceeding. there are almost ten years spanning all this work. it all fits neatly in a manila folder.
there is more to come. a book chapter on Twitch.tv and user experience research. a short piece on blogging as a ritual of self care. more conference proceedings, possibly.
scholarship is not all I spend time and effort on though. especially lately. speaking of self care... part of my self-improvement journey this past several months has involved finding value in more than mere productivity and work ethic and professional accomplishment. it's difficult to even see how those attitudes have made up (and still make up) so much of how I've been conditioned to see myself. moving beyond that mode is not easy.
but I am trying. not everything needs to be conventionally "useful," after all.
even though I take on the role of a tool within the mechanisms of capitalism in exchange for a paycheck and health insurance and such, I can put that role aside and instead, for a moment, become nothing more than a tool for inhaling and exhaling and pondering the universe.
or I can be a tool for reading and interpreting knitting patterns. or for absorbing and reenacting step-by-step yarn-spinning tutorials. (I'm learning to use a drop spindle, see? it's fabulously difficult and not, all at the same time.)
my ravelry project logs tell me I began this shawl sometime in July of last year. six months later, at the beginning of winter break, I finished it, after restarting the whole thing twice, after ripping back to the stockinette section at least twice, and after doing way too much math to customize the number of lace repeats.
when I'd finally gotten through the first lace section and moved on to the final border... I noticed a couple of wonky twisted stitches that messed up the pattern pretty obviously. instead of purling the stitch then the yarn-over, I'd done them backwards and mucked up the eyelets. (it was only a million hours later that I figured this out exactly. proofreading lacework is a skill I'm not an expert in).
I had wanted to finish this shawl for October. for Thanksgiving at least. for early winter. but now it was almost Christmas and I had a terrible choice to make. could I live with this mistake? or could I not? would anyone else ever notice these backwards stitches? would I even notice them most of the time, as long as the shawl was keeping my shoulders warm? or would the mangled lace haunt me forever if I didn't fix it now?
this, by the way, is why you're supposed to check your knitting more thoroughly as you go. you're supposed to catch this kind of thing way before more than a whole new row of stitches separates you from your mistakes, let alone half a dozen.
I decided I couldn't leave it. I wanted the lace to look impeccable. so I experimented on my own, trying to work down to untwist things just in the sections where it needed it-- but this made things irrevocably worse. with no other option but tearing back 8 whole sets of knit-purl lacework, I began a desperate search for any documented knitting wisdom I could possibly trust to guide me out of this disaster. Ravelry comment threads. knitting forums. youtube. I pleaded with them all for an answer.
most of what the internet had to give me were tips on how to knit proper lace in the first place, not anything on fixing lace that you've messed up. but finally... somehow... with mere ounces of hope left that there was any reasonable solution for undoing whatever I had done... I found that Suzanne Bryan had a short video on exactly what I'd been looking for.
this video tutorial was everything. I curled myself around my phone screen almost breathless as I watched it, my mind doing somersaults as I realized this could work. it could work! if I could follow the method just right, and keep track of all the ladder rungs of yarn, and not undo more than just the one section...! this would solve all my lace problems. it was brilliant.
so I scrambled to fetch my spare circular needles and cords, carefully and excitedly knit backwards to the problem section, re-watched the relevant video clips twice more, and then started pulling stitches off.
it was a mess.
it was highly stressful, my fears and hopes in the utmost tension as I worked.
I had to keep going back to the pattern's lace charts (even though I generally stay far far away from the snaking codes of any knitting chart if I can ever help it) to pinpoint exactly which bit of the lace I could leave as it was and which bits needed re-making. I had to count and re-count how far down my mistake was and how far over from which edge of the scallop.
counting is the hardest part of knitting.
but once I had it figured out, I just had to keep swapping the size 6 needle points from this end of their cord to the other so all the re-stitched stitches would be the right size. and it worked. I reconstituted the two tiny sections into perfect lace, paid very close attention to all the mistakes-waiting-to-happen in the remaining few rows, and finished the shawl the evening.
why was this lace-repair adventure so absolutely thrilling? I'm not sure. there was some risk that I'd again just make the mistakes even worse. there was the novel weirdness of loose yarn-spaghetti draped precariously between everything else.
it wasn't easy, but it was exhilarating. Ms. Suzanne Bryan's claims about her lace-fixing techniques are 100% correct. if you manage to complete a fix like this, you feel utterly bulletproof and infallible for the rest of the day.
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why does this small saga of knitting woe and triumph deserve documentation in this little blog of mine? I don't know if there's an answer, other than my typical interest in capturing bits of experience and emotion in as vivid and accurate description as I can. I like to write these vignettes of where and when and how, with all the metaphor and adjectives they need to vibrate satisfyingly from my imagination to yours.
as for the finished shawl-- it's nice and cozy and blue. I've worn it a few times, even. but for me, the process of knitting is the fun part. the satisfaction of transforming material from one state into another state is undeniable.thankfully, everything is a process from a certain perspective: crafting, learning, scholarly-research-agenda-ing, fire, and people too.
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