Wednesday, March 30, 2005

The Courage To Be Imperfect

Sorry I haven’t written in a while. I hope for those of you who celebrate you had a Happy Easter / Ostra. We had the family over and 1 surprise guest. I strayed from the traditional path and served seafood (shrimp, mussels, clams, scallops and flounder) and huntsman’s stew (sausage, pork chops and chicken thighs). Everything was good but it left me little time to knit.

On Monday night our neighbor had smoldering wires and we had three fire engines and two ambulances with strobes going arrive to our neighbor hood around 11:00 pm and stay for quite a while. Everyone was fine though the house took a little damage. Needless to say I never got back to sleep.

And that said, I knew I shouldn’t knit when I was so very tired but I did and now today I find that as I unravel my ladders on my clappy there is a big, most terrible mistake in my work. And I was about to just rip the whole thing out when a voice in my head said, “You can fix this. No it won’t be perfect but only you will know.”

And it made me think about the reason for this clappy and that I probably talk to people who have some sort of inner blemish that none of us can see but makes them who they are. For me it is my inner ear it was damaged either in formation or when I got really sick one year and now I have vestibular neuronitis. If I lean to far one way without leaning the other way I get vertigo for about three weeks. But you wouldn’t know it to look at me.

Most people that have heart disease don’t look any different on the outside. But on the inside there is some trouble with their heart. You see my clappy is still teaching me about life and it wanted something hidden that no one else could see so that it could become a symbol…a symbol of the Courage to Be Imperfect.

I think imperfection is harder then perfection. In perfection you are striving towards something that cannot be but you can forever work towards. In imperfection you have to accept yourself and all that makes you a whole and complete being. I feel it is far scarier to accept ones’ self as we are.

It is that lesson that my clappy teaches me today. Isn’t it beautiful? If you didn’t know about the mistake you might never find it, though now I bet you will look for it because you know it is there. Yes, I will leave it there and remember this lesson and just maybe I can look at myself with a little more love and a little less criticism...after a much needed night of sleep.

Enough of that. My clappy is on the decrease rows and as soon as she is finished and blocked I will put up pictures.

I have worked on nothing else since the last posting…so will have nothing else to show.

I have decided to make another clappy. Originally I bought a poncho from Old Navy that is a clapotis sewn together poncho style and then stitches were picked up for a neck collar. I like this idea and I may make one this way later…the jury is still out on this one.

I hope you all are enjoying the sun if you have it.

Ruinwen
:)

3 comments:

Nana Sadie said...

We may be imperfect, Ruinwen, but our lights still shine!!
(((hugs)))

Anonymous said...

There's also the idea that we were talking about a few weeks ago, of how craftspeople in centuries past who were expert enough to create perfect works would intentionally include a mistake because perfection is only for the divine.

I'm glad that you're working through the "good enough is never good enough" that we both were brought up with...something I still wrestle with too.

You do realize that now I'll have to ask you to show me where the mistake is, right? :)

--rueyeet

Anonymous said...

I will agree that it is indeed much harder to be "imperfect" and let it go rather then continually striving for perfection. That's a hard thing to come to terms with, always wanting things to be right. It's much easier to get it right and keep it right then it is to let a mistake go. It my knitting life, I'm dealt with conundrums like that everyday. In the rest of my life, I'm learning that I'm ok. Being imperfect is part of being human.