When We Create Our Own Resistance
I learned a new knitting skill today.
Before we celebrate too much, there's a story.
In fall 2023, I came across a cowl pattern that I adored from the start. It looked like a quick and easy knit, featuring colorwork and a Latvian braid both skills I'm familiar with. "I can't wait to knit that," I thought, and I added it to my to-knit list.
I try to take advantage of Black Friday yarn sales and plan out my knitting for the next year over Thanksgiving weekend, and so, in late November 2023, I purchased the yarn for this cowl I so wanted to knit. I picked out fall colors and planned to cast on the following fall for my fall collection for the shop.
I cast on last September - 13 months ago! - and quickly discovered that my normal method for doing colorwork wasn't going to work for this cowl. Because the background color is white, the fall-colored yarn I was using for the pattern itself showed through the background. The pattern advised using a colorwork technique called ladder back jacquard. I'd heard about this technique from knitting podcasts, but last fall, I knew that I didn't have the headspace to learn it. Work and life felt too overwhelming, and so I stashed the project into a bin.
Every once in a while, I'd come across it and think about how much I wanted to knit it, and I'd try to convince myself that I was overthinking it and that my usual colorwork method would be fine. I'd start it again and realize that no, it definitely would not work.
2025 rolled around, and I was determined to knit it finally this year. I'd heard that ladder back jacquard is similar to double knitting, so I decided that I needed to learn double knitting first, even though fellow knitters told me that I really didn't need to learn double knitting first.
I learned double knitting, and still I felt too daunted to try ladder back jacquard. I had a week off of work in August before I started a new job, with absolutely no work stress to occupy my brain, but I still managed to avoid the project for the entire week.
Today, I was off of work in observance of Indigenous Peoples' Day, and the kids had school. About a month ago, I'd pulled the project out of its storage bin, determined that it would get done this fall for sure. This morning, I set out for a run first thing, showered, and then sat down at my desk with a YouTube tutorial.
Y'all. I had learned the technique by 8:49 a.m. I could have done it any morning before starting work, without even sacrificing my workout. I've been working on the cowl throughout the day, not needing to look back at the tutorial after the first two rounds of the project. All told, it took probably 20 minutes, max, to learn this skill that I have put off for thirteen months and found all sorts of ways to avoid. I even thought about scrapping the project entirely despite having purchased the pattern and yarn specifically for it.
It has me thinking about how we can create our own resistance. Truly, there weren't external factors keeping me from learning this technique. I just made it a Really Big Thing in my head. One of you might already have this lovely little cowl around your neck if I could have just gotten out of my own way and pulled up YouTube during a quiet twenty minutes.
I'm writing this while at my daughter's gymnastics' practice, where she spends six hours a week practicing skills that look impossible - like aerials, kips, and squat ons - and thinking about how I wouldn't even try this one thing with yarn for a year, a month, and a day.
I don't have any sharp psychological analysis of the why behind this. But it has me thinking that I want to look for the other ladder back jacquard in my life so I can just try the damn thing.