What makes you a Fearless Knitter?

A while back I did a talk on what it means to be a Fearless Knitter.

During a followup Q&A, one person wanted to know what to do with that special yarn they’re afraid to ruin with the wrong project.

Another was struggling with only seeing their mistakes in a knitting project, even though it was mostly beautiful work.

But one question stood out to me among the others, and it gets at the heart of becoming a Fearless Knitter.

Here’s what they said:

This kind of fear comes from not being certain how making a mistake will turn out.

For example, you might worry that:

Maybe you’ll have to rip out the whole project and start again from the beginning.

Maybe you’ll ruin that expensive ball of yarn which you’ve been holding onto for years, just waiting for the perfect project.

Maybe Susan will see you drop a stitch and you aren’t sure how to fix it and she’ll tell everyone in your knitting group that you’re a “dropper” and they’ll laugh at you so hard that Steve the Amazon delivery guy will hear and he’ll find a different route in order to avoid you which will break your heart because he has a great smile and you look forward to chatting with him, and…

…you get the point.

It’s easy to get carried away with all of the bad things that can happen.

Human’s LOVE to tell stories and your brain can come up with some doozies.

But the truth is the stories in our head are ALWAYS way worse than the reality.

The fear of the unknown is something core to the human experience.

And there’s only one way to move past it.

Making the Unknown Known

If you’ve been reading The Yarnist for a while, you know that I’m a big advocate for embracing your mistakes.

There’s plenty of evidence that we learn the most when we fail AND try again.

That iterative process helps to create neural pathways which our brains use as short cuts. Once we have learned those skills, we don’t have to think about them so hard in order to do them.

You have to practice.

Practice over time builds confidence BECAUSE you start to know what to expect.

This is easy to say, but you may be wondering if there’s something specific you can practice.

Yes!

Yes there is.

Practice Makes Perfect

Here’s an exercise for you to try.

Start knitting a swatch for an inch or two.

Then…

…remove the needles

What happened when you removed the needle?

Did your knitting spontaneously unravel?

Probably not, unless you were knitting a Slinky.

Now try to put all the stitches back on (facing the same direction).

This is a great way to begin reading your work; understanding stitch structure and orientation.

Even if you didn’t get all of the stitches on facing the same way, that’s fine.

We embrace the mistake and try again.

And again.

And again.

And again…until you’ve done it so many times you’re no longer afraid of making mistakes.

That’s when you can relax and just enjoy the knitting.

Conclusion

It’s natural to be afraid of what you don’t know.

The only way to build confidence is to make the unknown known which takes practice.

But what do you think?

What’s your favorite tip for knitting fearlessly?