Last week I made a knitting mistake that I should have seen coming. I made the project much harder than it needed to be because I ignored my own advice: I didn’t swatch.

I’ve been working on a new design influenced by Ayrton. Since it uses a similar yarn weight and gauge, I thought, why swatch? I knew the important numbers, so I cast on. Everything went smoothly until I hit the increases in the pattern stitch. My brain insisted it was best to place them on the rest round, but it wasn’t working.

Instead of pausing to test options in a swatch, I kept knitting, unknitting, and reknitting the same section. Finally I tinked back the entire round. It was just over 100 stitches, but between the do-overs I probably worked three times that. A little twenty-stitch swatch would have been faster and much kinder to my patience.

Eventually, I tried what felt like the “outlandish” solution: working the increases directly in the pattern stitch. Of course, that solved it immediately. The irony isn’t lost on me.

Here I am, encouraging intentional making and reminding others to slow down, while I charged ahead with a full-size garment because I was eager to see it take shape. I’ve carried this idea in my head for years; I just wanted to knit it already.

The Lesson

But those extra stitches taught me something worth remembering. The Baal Shem Tov teaches hishtavut¹, the kind of balance I needed in that moment. Keeping an even spirit whether things go smoothly or require ripping back. There’s wisdom in not being overwhelmed by turmoil. Sometimes a knitting mistake is just a mistake², not a scathing critique on my ability to knit.

Yes, the setback annoyed me. Yes, it delayed this project and others. However, the ripped-out stitches weren’t wasted; they became part of my design process. They’re not visible, but they’re structural. They provided a reminder to slow down and keep perspective, a lesson worth more than a flawless knit.

The design is now being knit with more patience and yes, more swatches. Progress matters, and so too does process.

Sometimes the project teaches us exactly what we need to learn, whether we planned for the lesson or not.

1. The Baal Shem Tov (Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, c. 1698-1760) was the founder of Hasidic Judaism. Hishtavut, often translated as equanimity or inner balance, is discussed in Tzava’at HaRivash 10, a collection of his teachings. The concept emphasizes maintaining spiritual equilibrium regardless of external circumstances. For more background, see The Baal Shem Tov at My Jewish Learning. ↩︎
2. For more on framing and mistakes, I recommend reading Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well by Amy C. Edmondson. I wrote up a few thoughts about this book at pennyshima.com ↩︎