A knitting pattern is a beautiful promise. With just the right tools and materials, it says, you can make exactly what I have made. The pictures, at just the right light and angles, promise perfection.
The problem, of course, is any deviation from the instructions, materials, and tools will yield a distinctly different product, a potentially very imperfect product.
As a beginner knitter who was sourcing yarn from the thrift store while slowly building up a supply of needle types and sizes, it quickly became a challenge to consider how the materials I could access would work with the patterns I found online and in books.
I’ve learned that some yarns want to be. Some lovely Álafloss I got from an estate sale just didn’t want to be a blanket, no matter how I tried. Though it was the right weight for the pattern, the swatches didn’t feel right. The same pattern with 220 Superwash Merino and some Icelandic Spunni knitted up like butter, despite those yarns being a lighter weight than the pattern called for.
The problem is that patterns promise complete replication when exact circumstances are adhered to. Anything can be replicated with the right materials, tools, and instructions.
But life doesn’t work that way.
Even if I did buy the (expensive) exact yarn, in the exact colors, with the same (expensive) brand needles, and followed the pattern to create the exact same piece, it would still be different.
No matter what I’m working with, I’m a different person, my environment is different, my tension on the yarn varies, and my ability to count stitches correctly is questionable. The intent I put into the piece will contribute to a unique outcome almost too mysterious and magical to predict.
I could invest far more money and time into my knitting in order to replicate the patterns, but I can’t say it would increase my satisfaction or joy in the craft.
I could also frustrate myself to no end in an attempt to create perfect replications of patterns.
Instead, I pull a little from one pattern, try out different combinations, try to get familiar with types and weights of yarn. Though patterns are integral for inspiration and learning new skills, intuition is the guiding star and freeform experimentation is the joy in the journey.
There’s an infinite amount of combinations in knitting and some will work for me and some won’t.
Buying the exact yarn, in the exact colors, with the exact size needles, might yield a good copy, but that’s all it can ever be – a good copy. My fingers, my process, my environment can’t recreate the original.
So why would I want it to?
Embracing my unique circumstances and working with what I’ve got lets the patterns and pictures be inspirational, no more, no less.
I used to be frustrated when I attempted to craft. What I made was never like the picture. Now I see this as the perfect measure of creation. My mistakes, my process, my work, my own relationship with the materials.
This is all to say, an emphasis on replication (one might even say uncritical, thoughtless, exacting replication) is founded on a misunderstanding. Replication is fundamentally impossible.
At church, we are encouraged to replicate Joseph’s Smith’s life changing prayer, Moroni’s call to pray over the Book of Mormon, and now there’s a two year checklist full of action items for new converts.
The covenant path, as we know it now, continues to turn spirituality into replication. Everyone should get baptized. Everyone should enter the temple. Everyone should wear those garments 24/7. The covenant path turns the journey of conversion into a checklist. The garments wearing pendulum has swung back to prescriptive practices.
As church patterns correlate in ever tightening circles (the center cannot hold), replication becomes more urgent and more pressurized.
If we just do the exact thing in the exact way with exactness, the outcome will always be the same, our church patterns promise.
In knitting and at church, the one thing I’ve learned is that replication isn’t realistic.
6 Responses
I like this analogy. My experience that even when you look at the knitting pattern and think, okay let’s do this, many of us end up out of necessity and inspiration having to do it our own way. Just to make it possible that LDS spirituality could make any sense to my kids, I am doing so much work to differentiate. I had revelation it was time to wield my own personal authority and be intentional about my own beliefs. No more submission to the institution’s party line when it comes to queer issues, women’s issues, or some of the religious/historical narratives. I am hating how much every week at church lately seems like an infusion of “there’s only one right way to believe and do this pattern” or “we only will really love and accept you if you serve a mission and go to the temple” to my kids. I feel like the leaders are so much more stressed out than when I was a kid or youth, and they no longer take time to offer something that is actually spiritually nurturing or that delves deeper than covenant path messaging.
My mother-in-law is the kind of quilter who makes all kinds of risks and using scraps recklessly. She uses whatever she has and puts fabrics most of us would never think to put together. She often fears things are turning out ugly. But the truth is she makes beautiful quilts that are very unique and the risks are worth it. There is an ancient Greek essay about art that talks about how there are always elements of a piece of art that turn out apart from our control and will, often to beautiful effect. That is how I’m trying to think of the spiritual development in my home. I don’t have an ideal context or materials. I don’t really have any control. I don’t have all the good stuff I thought I’d have for my kids, including at church. But I’m pulling in the scraps I have and still trying to put something meaningful together, and I now longer really care that much about the original pattern.
This is beautiful and well said.
As an art teacher, I recently had the thought that maybe faith is more like fine art than craft. In craft, especially as a beginner, we follow someone else’s pattern and there is a predetermined end. But in fine art, the artist follows intuition and creates something unique without a pattern. Only they know when it is complete. I appreciate your knitting analogy. Life is so personal. Everyone’s circumstances are different. We need room to do things our own way, which is the plan Christ proposed. I wish we focused more on transformation and love than on rituals.
Oh, I love the fine art idea! That’s so helpful.
This speaks to how our church materials operate in perpetual beginner mode. It’s like taking Art 101 over and over and over again. Learning foundational skills and imitating the greats has its place, but it’s not the end in itself.
My mother was an expert knitter. A taught classes and wrote books kind of knitter. She tried to teach me, honestly she did, and all she succeeded in teaching me is the one thousand and sixty four reasons your end project will not be like the example you are trying to copy. You have to do a swatch of every yarn to see the scale it knits up to on the size of needles, because how many stitches per inch depends not only on yarn and needle size, but also whether you hold the yarn tension tight or lose, whether you are knitting English or European. (Most Americans and taught one, while the other is easier, faster, and more consistent. She of course taught the superior, uncommon method, which is in some ways backwards.)
My mother was quick to point out that some people just do not have the patience to count stitches, follow instructions, and sit as long as knitting takes. Me, for example. I cannot sit still. Even my cat won’t get on my lap because even while reading, I am tapping and wiggling. Did I mention that I am ADHD? I just do not have the ability to count stitches as well as keep in mind how to follow instructions as to when to knit, pearl, or whatever. All of my attempts to knit, ended up being finished by my mother.
But my religion refuses to see that some of us just can’t do it. I am the kind of person who gets the “wrong” answers to prayers. I pray about Joseph Smith and get told, in words, “it doesn’t matter”. I pray about the temple and get told that it just isn’t for some people. I see past the propaganda about Joseph Smith and I don’t like him. My “creep” radar was going off before I even heard about polygamy or any historical issues. I just felt like he was a jerk. From sweet little stories in primary about him playing with boys, and I am thinking, “boy is he full of himself” and I am seven sitting in primary, not having words for the kind of narcissistic personality that my father is and I see in Joseph Smith. I ask my primary teacher why God couldn’t forgive us without killing Jesus, and she just stares at me….for forever, then changes the subject. I go home from church often feeling like something is the matter with me that I just don’t understand. So much is confusing, like why the church puts SO much pressure on people to do what it tells them to, yet talks about how important “free agency” is, as it forces people to blindly obey. I did not want to be baptized, but I was forced, so does it even count or should I have to do it over again? And people just insist that I really made the choice. No, I didn’t. My grandmother threw a screaming fit and my mother made me. Why? My Catholic friend is sure she will be with her family after death, but all the Mormons I know are scared that someone won’t make it, yet we are “special” because we believe in forever families. But we’re scared and other religions just take for granted they are forever? Yeah, nothing makes sense and I am a freak if I ask.