One of my passions is to learn new skills or refine known ones, but sometimes it’s easy to lose contact with what it is I really want to achieve. We all make things for our own reasons, I want to make pretty stuff just like everyone does, but sometimes we can lose our mojo and finding it can mean doing for another rather than ourselves.
I’ve been knitting for more than 10 years, and I picked it up at a time in my life that was full of difficulties and fears. I didn’t have a plan, I just needed to do, and I made a lot of things that weren’t that great but still gave them away to friends and family. This is not the same as making something with the intention of giving. These things were made for me (my sanity), then gifted. To clarify, I was the primary recipient of what the knitting will produce, I needed the comfort, the mindless meditation and the satisfaction of my toil. The loved ones who received my gifted items were the secondary recipients, and I feel very lucky that these dear people reacted graciously to my gifts.
But doing only for ourselves is not the only or best way to grow as a person, or as an artist. If we only do what is comfortable and what we’ve done before, do we really grow to our fullest self, or grow to be the person we can become in the fullness of our lives. The satisfaction we gain from our toil needs to grow with us or it will inevitably be replaced with dissatisfaction. I could make the same scarf over and over again if I wanted to, right up until I started to hate it and never wanted to knit another scarf ever again, but then I would lose everything I was getting from working on my knitting. So, how do we safeguard against any impending feelings of dissatisfaction?
I hope you spotted it, but we need to make the giving to the recipient our primary reason for doing whatever project we are wanting to do. To clarify, I don’t mean making projects and gifting to charity. I am talking about a more intimate, more targeted and specific project. I’m talking about a way to step out of your comfort zone and give up some of your creative control to the recipient. This is not a project that is instigated by the recipient in a “will you make this for me” moment. If you are a long-time maker, you will know that 50% of these moments will end in tears and on occasion, loss of friendship, no one wants to feel used. We need to keep our sovereignty, while choosing to actively give up some creative controls. Some examples of this would be to say, knit a shawl for your daughter’s wedding day, or take a professional commission from a paying client. The idea it to set reasonable and achievable goals and meet them, while at the same time pushing past a barrier, even a small one, because that’s how we grow.
I want to share with you a growth experience I’m having, because it has helped me appreciate myself and push past a boundary I was unsure of. This time last year I was at home like most people and feeling crushed by the social boundaries of a pandemic. I am a member of a Facebook knitting group and noticed a post looking for people to knit samples for a small Australian business. It really struck me as a possibility, as my knitting skills are advanced but I have only knitted projects I felt comfortable knitting. So I reached out to the poster and filled in an application form. Within a month I had received my first sample, having never done something like this before I was surprised to feel quite excited to get started. In the package I received was the yarn, a pattern, instructions for the assembly, a return post satchel and a deadline. In my application I had conveyed my capabilities and preferences as a knitter and also the tools and hardware I used for projects, so the pattern I received was within my purview. What I couldn’t change was things like the yarn, or the size of the garment, but I had control over things like my cast on method and my preferred sewing up method. It was within my ability but outside my previous boundary, I was getting paid but I had to meet a deadline. With my usual projects, I may have set a deadline, but it was “suggested” and not necessarily met, so I surprised myself that not only could I meet the deadline but also produce the sample that was requested and achieve a very high standard of quality.
I received praise for my work, (and the commission payment) and not long after, a second request to knit another sample. It’s one thing to do it once, but I wanted to be consistent and do it again, not for the money (it isn’t much) but to know the first time wasn’t a fluke, and the next sample was a more challenging pattern than the first. And I found a new boundary with that project, in the first sample I had made a few mistakes, and reverse knitted back to them and fixed them, but with the second sample I made a mistake early and didn’t have time before the deadline to undo so much work to fix it. I learned to accept imperfection, which can be difficult for anyone who takes pride in doing a good job, I had to tell myself that “a mistake isn’t a mistake, but an opportunity to learn”. And what did I learn? That I am not a machine, I make mistakes and I should never be down on myself when my imperfections shine through. I admitted the mistake to the commissioner and that I wasn’t in a position to fix it inside my deadline, and… the world didn’t end, I was praised again for my work and I was offered a third commission. This was a barrier I hadn’t anticipated, but I still benefited from having grown beyond it. What I learned? That my perceived limitations can be exceeded, so that tomorrow, I will be more than I am today.
Catherine Hunt - Fibre Artisan 