Perfection versus Improvisation
I was crocheting this scrappy baby afghan the other day at our local open knit/crochet gathering and not paying good attention to the number of stitches per row. When I got home and had crocheted a few more rows I noticed that the afghan had an hour glass shape to it. When I counted the number of stitches on the current row I had 12 less than I needed. Now the question became - do I rip it all out and start over to gain perfection or do I leave it and improvise in the border? Feeling inventive and reluctant to frog (rip it out) I decided to keep going and see what I could do to make it look okay and be more inventive with the border. I added stitches to each row until I had the correct number again and then worked until the desired length.
After I finished the last row, I decided to frame it in a navy blue so I crocheted around to the dented in part and then filled in with back and forth rows of navy before continuing to the other side where I also filled in with the navy yarn. Then I added a border of golden brown still filling in where it didn’t look even. Another row of border all in half double crochet and the border was as even as I can usually get a crocheted border and I had a unique baby afghan.
This whole exercise got me to thinking about how life is seldom perfection but a series of adjustments and improvisations. If I allow myself to become upset every time I make a mistake and try to rip it apart I often feel frustrated and like I’m a failure. However, if I look at my error and play the ‘what if’ game and try to improvise a solution I often come out with an improvement rather than a mistake. Now I’m the first to admit that sometimes you just have to suck it up and rip it out to fix something but not always.
Here’s to seeking improvisations before berating ourselves for a ‘mistake’. We just might discover the next great pattern or invention - you never know.