Fudge Friday: the good in the bad - twisted stitches

I am a self-taught knitter. When I wanted to learn how to knit, there was no living family member who could show me. I worked at a library, so I learned from a book.

It wasn’t so hard.

I knit happily for many years - probably close to 15.

One day, I was sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. My 5-year-old son was in with the doctor without me. I was sad and scared and worried. I had brought my knitting and I was knitting and I was crying. I didn’t want anyone to see me.

Things got blurry and I was still knitting. So I blinked my eyes really hard. Ever do that? Things become hyper clear. You’re trying to focus. I pulled my knitting up closer to my eyes. I was trying to make people around me think I was really concentrating on my knitting - I wasn’t.

But as I looked very carefully at those stitches, I saw that at the base of each stitch, there was little twist. I looked again. The stitches were TWISTED. What the heck!? I continued to knit the twisted stitches until I got home.

Back to the library. Back to the books.

I discovered I’d been knitting into back leg of my knit stitches instead of the front leg. No wonder my knitting was tight and I could rarely get gauge. Quite the revelation. I had to work at breaking the muscle memory of knitting into the back leg of the stitch and I could no longer knit as fast as I previously could because of it. It took me awhile to break the habit. But not too long.

My son? It all turned out fine….good even. My knitting? It improved. A few years after that I started designing. What did I learn from the experience?

• It’s never as bad as you think it is.

• Time fixes a lot of things.

• Crying can be good for you, in more than just the usual way.

• There’s always a little bit of good in even a big bit of bad.