I've been sharing some of my knitting oops moments on Bluesky, and was tempted to be like, really, I do know how to complete a knitted object without an error. And then a small internal voice said, but do you? And my initial response was of course I do. I have lots of finished items.
And then I started being like, well okay, that one, I crossed the cable the wrong way, and that one, I had to reknit the panel twice, and that one I had to tink back two rows.
Many moons ago, Yarn Harlot said experienced knitters don't make less mistakes, they just make different ones. Except, I joined a cowl as a moebius when I did not mean for it to be a moebius, which felt like a newbie mistake in many ways. What's different is, I knew immediately what I had done wrong and what it would take to correct it. I still let it sit for a day, pondering, just letting it be a moebius. If it was gonna get double wrapped around my neck, who would even know?
But in the end I fixed it. Because it is silly to have spent this time and money on something, that I could fix easily with minimal effort.
I think this is often true of other things, like writing. Now that I've written multiple books, my drafts are both better and worse. But if I forget what character C's name is halfway through, I know how to fix that. If no one has hair or clothes, I know how to fix that. So, as much as I whine that I hate editing, I know what things are no big deal to fix later. So that helps. Even if sometimes I write myself an edit note and go, yeah, that's a future me problem. Now I'm going to eat a treat.
