the blame game

i was recently commissioned to make a hat for a knitting publication. it's been a very exciting process of having the pattern accepted, looking over contracts and ultimately receiving 2 hanks of gorgeous hand dyed merino wool in the mail for me to make the sample out of. as i held the beautiful bundles of softness in my hands, i thought, 'and i'm getting paid to do this??? i could get used to this...' heavenly. 

not the yarn in question, as i have to keep it quiet until publication, but instead some of my own handspun as a place marker. yum!

i put the first hank on my swift, threaded it into the ball winder, and turned the crank. it went without a hitch and by the next evening, between my subway commute and lunch break i had a completed sample, ready to ship to the publisher for photographing. perfect! i still had a fair amount of yarn left from the first hank and was told that i could keep whatever was left as long as i sent along a bit for editorial purposes. i started a second hat so i could have one like the one that was going to be in the magazine.

again, a place marker: this is a crocheted hat i designed ,  1920s inspired.

once again, i set up the hank on the swift and started winding the ball. i was slightly rushed, as i was driving out that evening to visit my mom and wanted to get on the road. much to my horror, the yarn started to snag and twist all wrong. my first reaction was to think, 'who wound this hank on the niddy noddy??? clearly, they twisted it crazy and didn't fix it. what terrible quality control!' i started feeling kind of stressed and angry, cursing the manufacturer as every attempt to remedy the situation made it worse. finally, i decided i needed to leave it be until i got back from my weekend visit.

as i drove the familiar route to mom's house, i thought about my tangled mess of yarn. as i worked out how to fix it, i realized something: i was actually my fault it got tangled. when i thought the hank was on the swift properly and cut the threads holding it, i must have looped some of it in the wrong direction because i was rushed. i started thinking about how tangled our minds get when we aren't paying attention and rush ourselves, rather than slow down and simply think and pay attention. i also didn't fail to notice that my first impulsive response was to blame someone else, rather than consider that maybe i had made a mistake. again, this can happen when we're rushing. we jump to frustration and want to justify that feeling by making someone else responsible.

the funny part is, i like untangling knots. i find it soothing and satisfying. and if i hadn't had somewhere to be i would have fixed a cup of tea, put on a marathon of some sort of paranormal investigation program and untangled to my heart's content. so i tried to take a life lesson from this experience: there's no need to succumb to the drama in your mind when something doesn't go the way you expected. minor, and even major, inconveniences are always manageable if we choose to see them as manageable. and in the end, we can untangle our messes. then we can start to knit, which is the fun part. and that's what makes the tangle worth it.