Will Anyone Notice?

“Will it show? Do you think I need to rip it back?“

Ask me how to do a neater left leaning increase, or why you need to do those k1 sl1 setup rows on a tubular bind off, or what difference your gauge will make to the size of your sweater, and I’m your person. I’ll tell you everything – maybe even a bit more than you need to know.

But whether or not you need to rip back your knitting to the place where you did the thing? That wrongly twisted cable? Or where you started the new ball of wool in a rogue dye batch? Or the misaligned row of rib stitches? It all gets much more blurry. I’ll start off optimistically investigating the offending area, looking more closely at the stitches, perhaps I’ll also try to co-opt someone nearby to get a second opinion (when in truth it’s a first opinon), and then worm my way out, by asking you a bunch of questions so that it’s you who comes up with the answer. Inside I’m throwing my hands in the air hopelessly. This is a question not for a knitter, but for the knitter. And in this instance, that knitter is you.

The problem is this. The knitter thinks they are asking me for an opinion about how wrong/noticeable/spoiling their knitting error is. But that isn’t really what they’re asking me at all. What they really want is for me to say how they should feel about it and then somehow imbue that feeling with some senior knitterly validity. But here’s the thing. You know how you feel about it already!

So if I answer..

‘I can’t imagine that anyone else is ever going to notice your left twisted cable should have been a rightie‘, or better still, ‘It can be a little in-joke between you and your cable. You’re lucky in a way. Even Toast sweaters don’t have in-jokes with their wearers.‘

And you reply..

‘But I don’t want my sweaters to tell me jokes. They’re not supposed to be funny. I’ll see it every time and it will always bother me!‘.

..Well then we know what the answer is. You need to rip it back and twist the cable back the way it’s supposed to be. No more wrongly twisted cable funny business.

This isn’t about one of us being right and the other one wrong. It’s about a whole intricate mixture of tiny details that make you who you are, that also drive the reasons you like to knit, the things you decide to make, the way you want them to look. These things are really special, because they get to something really essential, YOU!

I feel like we need to somehow find a knitterly appropriation of the Yoruba proverb which holds that It is only the wearer of the shoes who knows where they pinch. Answers on a postcard please!