Perfectly Imperfect!

Remember weeks ago when I wrote about embracing "good enough?" Well, this is the finished shawl from that post. It is perfectly imperfect! (Or maybe imperfectly perfect?) I love it. It is huge and I can wrap up in it—if the weather ever cools off. I know that there are mistakes in there and that's okay. I'm glad I was realistic when I decided to keep going forward instead of trying to undo and correct mistakes. I might never have finished. I did know that these mistakes were not the kind that would lead to the shawl coming apart. "Good enough" doesn't mean shoddy. It's more about accepting the imperfections that are part of life.

 

Pattern: Magic Cake Shawl

Yarn: 227 grams of leftover fingering and dk yarns

Needles: size 5

This is how it began—I pulled out all my leftover bits of yarn, weighed them and lined them up in order. I had about 700 grams of yarn--that's enough to make a bedspread! I had to eliminate a lot from the line up.

Then I took the little balls that were left and wound them into one big cake of yarn, joining them together with a "magic knot." I learned that this same knot is used by rock climbers, too. (Bet they don't call it that.) Surely that meant it was good enough to hold my yarn together.

For a long time, this was my airport knitting, my car knitting, my porch knitting, my early morning knitting and my tired brain knitting. (That's how a couple of big mistakes got in there--I did take those out and make corrections.)

A friend looked at this and remarked, "Well, we can surely tell what colors you like." Since most of this yarn was from my own stash of leftovers, the colors did blend well. Many of these shawls are made at retreats and camps where knitters swap their yarns. That's fun, too, but since my wardrobe usually involves blue jeans, these colors work for me.

Thank you, Paula, for teaching us how to make a magic cake at your retreat in Georgia. And thank you, Robin, for sharing some samples of your handspun. They are beautifully tucked in there among my own yarns. I love that I have knitting friends scattered across the globe.