Sock It to Me

I started knitting socks in April of 2012. I'd tried socks a couple of times before and was always rewarded with epic fails--big, fat, sloppy socks that bagged at the ankle and could house a family of five. But this time I found a pattern that seemed doable in one of the Yarn Harlot's books and bought a set of bamboo needles (size one, U.S.) that were only a little thicker than a toothpick.

I cast on and set out. I knit while sitting on the love seat in front of the open window. I watched the leaves push out, tiny and green, on the trees across the street. I made one pair, then another. I watched the leaves on the top branches of the trees start to turn and curl. By the end of the summer, I'd made seven pairs--a few of them wearable--and learned a few tricks along the way about short rows, heel shaping and good vs. bad yarns. Since then I've probably knit up a dozen pairs, most of which I've given away as birthday or Christmas gifts. 

The Brevity blog featured this story from the book Art and Fear the other day: 

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot–albeit a perfect one–to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

What's true of pots is true of socks and writing and any other art in which talent runs a distant second to diligence. Practice makes stuff. It's not an event ("I wrote today!") but a process. It does not make perfect or much of anything as Sylvia Plath noted when she wrote: "Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children."

Apparently those advertising people were onto something beyond running when they coined the slogan "Just do it." Whatever it is you've been wanting to do, just do it.