G. K. Chesterton once said that if something is worth doing well, it is worth doing badly.
I always wanted to knit and crochet as a child; Little House in the Big Woods and The Witch of Blackbird Pond saw to that. Being Vietnamese, our family always had an enormous supply of chopsticks near to hand (the good kind—not the glorified toothpicks that come with takeout), and they looked pretty much like knitting needles to me.
Needless to say, I didn’t learn to knit.
As an enterprising seven-year-old, it didn’t take me long to figure out that needle arts were considered a typical homeschooler thing and that there were a quite a few ‘big girls’ in church who could teach me. I learned the knit stitch (but not how to cast on) and single crochet (but not that turning chains don’t count as stitches). Eventually I learned single rib and thought blissfully for several weeks that it was called the purl sitch.
My youngest brother still owns a baby blanket produced during those weeks. It is about the size of a tea towel, and even he can probably tell where I wove in the ends.
At some point I begged for knitting lessons and my mom, who thought to herself that it would be a useful skill (and that some sanctification couldn’t hurt), paid an older homeschooler $7 an hour to teach me. I shall pass over the dropped stitches, straggly yarnovers, tangled acrylic yarn vomit, and tears that followed. But as the Good Lord (formal cause) and Mom (efficient cause) would have it, Corrie and I stuck it out for four years.
And not knowing where it would lead, a stitch dictionary and I got together to create my first design—a pillow for Corrie’s hope chest. It had a knit/purl star pattern on it, and the ends didn’t show (mostly).
Soon after that Corrie got married, and I was on my own. I had a few books from craft stores, thrift shops, or the internet to rely on, and then a few more, and a few more…and okay, a whole bunch more. My encouraging friends and relations donated yarn and gift certificates and even offered to pay me too much for stuffed animals and Christmas stockings (adorable to the untrained eye and atrocious to the trained).
See where this is going?
There came a point when I never followed a pattern exactly. The stockinette bags and ribbed scarves and wonky penguin chicks were always modified to suit the occasion. Larger bags, wider scarves, seamless projects (those pesky ends again!). The yarnovers became neater. The yarn vomit was woolen instead of acrylic. There were still tears.
You don’t want to know what my first sweater looked like.
But enough about me; I am only a little person in a wide world, after all. Every good gift comes from above—including thrift stores, Merino sheep, red clay, and the gift of doing things badly for a while. God is sovereign, even over my mistakes—past, present, and future—which is something to be grateful for.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Ruth