I think with knitting, I am always an optimist. I always think everything will work perfectly, even if I don’t swatch and never tried that pattern before. I am a beginner-beginner who doesn’t want to believe it.
No matter how many times I unravel and redo, I always make the same mistake of doing the least possible to make sure my future project will be a success. I just sincerely expect it to be.
And it’s a pain.
I’m trying to remember if it was the same with sewing; if I tried a lot of difficult things that were way too complicated for my skills and failed miserably. I can think of one example at least. I had been only making handbags and altering clothes when I saw a really cool dress pattern in a Burda magazine. It was blue, made with a stretchy lining, a flowy base of Georgette and intricate straps. I remember taking a long trip to buy the fabric, spending quite a lot for a garment and starting to cut the Georgette straight away.
It almost worked. It was wonky and not wearable but it looked like a dress. I haven’t sewn such a complicated dress since this summer when again I tried cutting into fabric without a pattern, trying to redo an interesting drape I have seen on Pinterest and imagining everything will look perfect and that I was a superhero seamstress. It didn’t work.
I must be an optimistic sewer as well then.
I guess this is good, because I am quite brave in my sewing and knitting. But I do fail a lot š
What about you? Are you optimistic or rather pessimistic when you sew or knit?
Oh, I can totally relate! Iām both an optimistic sewer and knitter. That, paired with a need to always change at least one thing about a pattern, comes with a lot of failure.
On the bright side, it leads me to knit and sew more independently from pattern companies and gives me a deeper understanding of why mistakes happen and why certain techniques are crucial. And then again, not all experiments fail and sometimes they even turn out surprisingly great (which always amazes me).
What I love the most about knitting is that ā unlike sewing ā most mistakes can be corrected. This makes optimistic knitting much easier š
You’re right about this “optimism” making one more independent. I also think it allows me to create my own patterns (even if they’re not great:) and not feel like you need to find a perfect pattern when you already have an idea and know what you want to make.
I didn’t look at knitting like that, but it’s true, anything you knit wrong can be unravelled and re-knit perfectly! Good point.
This only makes me more optimistic š