This morning I searched for a beginning knitting tutorial on YouTube and, as if so often the case these days, I found many video options for this topic. It never ceases to amaze me how one can now easily find tutorials online to learn (or, in my case, re-learn) a particular skill or method on almost any subject. Most of my creative textile activity is spent sewing clothes or quilting, but when I saw this particular ball of yarn for a dollar at a estate sale recently, I thought it would make a pretty scarf. So I bought some knitting needles and today I started creating my scarf. 
Although I didn’t know the woman who lived at the house where the estate sale took place, judging by what I saw, it was apparent that not only was she a painter (lots of partially completed canvases, tubes of paint, etc..) but she may have also liked to knit. By buying one of her balls of yarn and knitting something with it, it seemed to honor her memory in a way.
I’ve written about a similar subject in one of my blogs on my professional singing and teaching website. In that particular post, I described the rewarding process of bringing music from several centuries past to life. I noted parallels to the strange yet gratifying process of finishing my maternal grandmother’s quilt blocks and quilt tops that had been preserved in a cedar chest ever since she died in the mid 1930s. Quilting around her stitches gave me a tactile connection to her that I wouldn’t have had otherwise since she died decades before I was born. It brought me such joy to complete what she started. Now I will be able to pass on something whole to my daughter from her great grandmother.
To be honest, there have been some projects that I’ve stopped partially the way through when it became obvious that continuing on would prove a futile and ultimate waste of my time (and thread!) But most often I finish what I start and learn from my efforts.
I think many perfectionists in the world (myself included) find the premise of “good enough” difficult to leave as finished. As I’ve stated previously, adopting an “experiment vs. Masterpiece” attitude has proven a healthy way of looking at my own creative endeavors. This said, I still pick out and re-do my less than precise efforts. What can I say? I like clean lines. Back to experimentation, the practice tends to promote curiosity, something I hope I will have for the remainder of my life.
PetiteSewSop 