Starting Over
I am sitting here unraveling my winter baby blanket from last year. My husband calls it my Buddhist practice - accepting the impermanence of life. I’ve done this many times before because a yarn pattern wasn’t striping the way I wanted it to or I started dropping stitches and didn’t notice for a few rows. I’ve also had to start a blanket over because it was too wide or too narrow. Each time I do this I try to accept the “wasted” time I am unraveling, knowing that by doing this I’ll be able to make it look the way I want instead of just putting up with it. This time it’s especially hard because I was pretty much done making the blanket. I had stuck it in a bag last year when the weather got warmer. I assumed I would pick it up again at some point but it sat in the corner for months and months. I’m starting a new blanket to work on during my plane trip and vacation so I wanted to finish the two in progress. I easily finished the rest of the spring blanket (which was narrower than I wanted) and I picked up the winter one and then remembered why I stuck it in a bag for months.
It’s just not looking how I want. I had decided to make it wider with the intention of it being able to be used for longer because my blanket widths weren’t looking like they could really wrap around a baby older than 6 months or so. My idea was that by making it wider, it would be useful for longer. But I made it way too wide to the point where it was cumbersome to work on and took an extra cone of yarn. It also took way more time to make (one of the reasons I like making baby blankets is because they are faster and I get to look at new yarn sooner).
So I’m kicking myself as I take this apart row by row because I should have made this decision way sooner than now. I could have made this decision a few rows in when I realized it was too wide. I also could have made this decision when the yarn unexpectedly changed its pattern (very unusual - there wasn’t a knot or anything indicating why this would happen). I had so many opportunities to start over but stubbornly kept going because I was too far along now, too much time had been poured into this blanket.
I crocheted a few more rows on the blanket, determined to just get it finished, but was getting more and more frustrated. I was really frustrated with my past self for not stepping up sooner. Then I realized that right now - this moment - was the least attached I was going to be to the blanket. I hadn’t really looked at it for 9 months so it was now or never. And then I started tearing it apart.
I don’t know why starting over is seen as such a bad thing in our culture. I’ve started over many times, reinventing myself, my career, my relationships. It’s not saying that all the time you invested before then was a waste or a mistake. We learn and grow in these situations. We get something that we take into the next situation. And we haven’t really lost or wasted that time. So I get to think about all this as I wind the yarn into balls to start over. And that’s why my husband calls this my Buddhist practice. It’s really a moment of grace that I can give to myself. I crochet to keep busy and have something to do on the couch in the evening. I’m not frantically crocheting to sell lots of things. So that time wasn’t really wasted - I got to enjoy doing something I like to do throughout the winter last year. And now I get to enjoy it (and that pretty yarn) all over again. And at the end of it I’ll have a blanket I’ll be proud to sell or gift.
