Tinker, Tailor, Writer, Frog
By Kelsey Allagood | March 11, 2024 |
That’s right, folks: It’s time for another installment of Kelsey Drawing Lessons About Writing From Her Other Hobbies! Fortunately or unfortunately for you, I’m running out of hobbies from which to draw writing-related lessons. Birdwatching might be the only one left, actually. Though I can probably find some similarities between writing and birds. Stay tuned.
I taught myself to knit during a two-week visit home during college. My parents lived in an isolated rural area, where there was little to do for someone under 21 whose friends lived far away besides hang out in the local Wal-Mart parking lot.
At some point, my mother had picked up a how-to book on knitting and crocheting, as well as some needles, hooks, and yarn. Bored out of my mind one day, I decided to start teaching myself how to crochet. Knitting had become popular among my hipster peers, and I’d overheard them on more than one occasion talk about how they had learned crochet first, as it was far easier to pick up. So, I picked up a hook and yarn, and consulted the book.
Reader, I Could Not Get It.
Crochet felt like Black Magic to me. Even with the diagrams, the process of making the first row—called the “starting chain,” which you must have to start actually crocheting—made absolutely no sense to me. I asked my mom, but she hadn’t gotten very far into the book. I think I inherited my “I must be good at something immediately or else I get frustrated and quit” trait from her.
Nowadays I’d go search YouTube for tutorials, but the satellite internet at my parents’ house made watching videos almost impossible. I remember being required by my college to watch a video about the dangers of binge drinking to be allowed to sign up for classes, and it took about an hour to load a ten-minute video.
So, I put the crochet hook down.
A few days later, bored again, I picked up the knitting needles and opened the book again.
It clicked. For whatever reason, working with my brain—instead of against it—helped me make progress (this is in bold because it’s a Writing Lesson, you see).
I managed to churn out a couple of wonky potholders, and I took the needles, yarn, and other accoutrements back to college with me, where I soon ventured into shawls, scarves, and even beanies.
What I never picked up—and still haven’t mastered, not even years later—is how to “tink.” That’s “knit,” but backwards, and it’s the process of undoing your knitting, usually because you made a mistake. And as anyone who’s ever tried anything will tell you, mistakes happen, no matter how practiced you are at a craft.
And because I couldn’t tink, I couldn’t fix my mistakes, which of course were many. It became the starting chain all over again: even with better internet access, my brain simply couldn’t parse how to knit backwards.
Over time, I came up with a couple of hacks to try to get around this issue. Using fuzzier yarn in variegated colors allowed me to hide some mistakes, such as dropped stitches or wonky patterning. Having index cards beside me so I could write down exactly what row I had just finished helped keep me on track.
But if I messed up my stitch or row counting, and only realized too late that I was knitting when I should have purled, or that I’d accidentally added an extra stitch? Forget it. Unravel the whole thing and start again.
Unsurprisingly, I never graduated far beyond knitting shawls, scarves, and beanies, because anything larger or more complex would invariably end in heartbreak when I reached most of the way done and had to unravel the entire thing because I’d made a simple mistake.
Plus, pressuring myself to never make mistakes or else I’d have to start over again made knitting less enjoyable.
I did eventually learn how to tink, and I can do it if I have a video to follow. But it’s slow-going, and still frustrating, and I haven’t yet figured out the key to making the re-knit yarn look the same as it did pre-tinking.
This past summer, more than a decade after I’d taught myself to knit, I decided to give crochet another try. I’d just finished a knitting project that I felt fairly “meh” about, and I felt frustrated with the limitations on the types of projects I felt ready to tackle. One can only make so many garter stitch scarves.
So, I got myself a couple of crochet hooks, pulled up YouTube, and tried again.
Reader, I still Could. Not. Get. It.
Until I did.
All it took was becoming a little hyperfixated on crochet for a few days to the detriment of my eating and sleeping habits (I do not recommend this approach to learning).
Honestly, I did not find learning crochet to be easier than knitting. But I’ve become almost entirely a crocheter now, and it’s all because you don’t have to do anything special to undo your work. You just pull the yarn and the knots undo (instead of tinking, undoing your crocheting is called “frogging” because you…rip-it, rip-it).
Since last summer, I’ve crocheted two cardigans and a pullover sweater, which are far more advanced than any of the knitting I’ve ever been able to do, and it’s all because now I’m finally allowed to make mistakes.
WU, what’s your relationship to mistakes, either in writing or another craft? Alternatively, tell me about your favorite thing you’ve ever made!
Kelsey Allagood (she/her) is a writer, occasional photographer, and trained political analyst specializing in the causes of war and systemic oppression. This background led her to begin writing fantasy fiction steeped in the anthropology of conflict.
Her writing can be found in literary magazines such as Barrelhouse, GRIFFEL, Menacing Hedge, and Wanderlust. Her photography has been featured in RESURRECTION mag. She has also written on peaceful resistance movements, art as a form of political resistance, and countering violent extremist ideology.
Kelsey has a Bachelor’s Degree in international and cultural studies from the University of Tampa and a Master’s Degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University.
She lives in Maryland with her husband, mother, and a rescue dog named Henry.
[coffee]
Love this. Yes! To be allowed to make mistakes. that is a gift to a writer…and any craftsperson. Ha ha to the rip it, rip it. I never heard of that before. BTW-I could never get knitting, but crocheting came with ease!
This made me laugh because I’ve been there, too! Making a sweater and realizing I’d made a critical mistake inches back. The debates I’d have with myself (no one will notice, it’s not a big deal) before frogging back days of work. :sob:
Now I know how to save a dropped stitch and even how to swap a stitch’s color when I’m doing stranded colorwork knitting.
And I’ve even learned to let some mistakes go. Which may be the hardest lesson of all!
Mistakes and I are chill, mostly. In most crafts, like silversmithing, imperfections add character. They give the viewer something to hold onto, something unique. In some cultures an imperfection is required in the design. The opposite, the perfect, can look too cold and machine-made or to some, too god-like.
It took me several tries and videos before I got crochet. I had to tell myself I was just going to sit with that hook and yarn and make some semblance of a square, no matter how weird and wrong. Turns out that was really what was needed, to learn my own way of creating the tension that is needed to hook. Now I teach crochet and run a club. I’ve learned there is no right or wrong way to hold the yarn. It’s whatever works for you, however you can get and maintain the needed tension.
That definitely translates to writing. If they turn the page, I say it’s working.
Happy hooking, Kelsey!
Now *that* is a metaphor! And it’s one a writer can come into from whole different angles. Is a form of writing Just Too Hard but worth banging our heads against until it comes together? Is something too tricky to do really well but worth using in a simple form where the imperfections don’t matter? Or some other method changes it all because it puts the “problems” in a place we can fix?
There are hundreds of ways to write, and all of them filter our own way of thinking. Get the right combination and something we thought was impossible can just fall into place.
I’m grateful that we don’t have to “tink” or “frog” an entire page–as people did in the typewriter/mimeograph days–to fill in a missing letter or word. In my first couple of newspaper jobs, both involving page-size photo negatives on metal sheets that went onto an offset printing press, there were three layers of editors and proofreaders checking everything. Small mistakes could be fixed by producing a line or two of type which was physically cut out of a sheet of photo paper with an X-acto knife and pasted over the mistake. Then the whole page was re-shot on a huge camera and turned into a new negative. And these were just small-town papers. I can’t imagine what went on at the New York Times.
I’ve been thinking a lot about working with my brain vs against it with my writing, so this really resonated. And yes–I figured out long ago that sewing and knitting were key activities for making peace with mistakes. Usually I still tink back and fix them, but I’ve learned how fix a number of errors without that, and I often have that moment of debate: how much is this error going to bother me, going forward? I think it’s interesting that knitting and crocheting are so “linear” compared to writing (because of the line of yarn)–perhaps something I noticed because I was sewing before I really got into knitting.
Hat tip on the crocheting–my sister prefers that too, but it’s rather lost on me. :-)
Anyway, I seem to repeatedly need the reminder that I can re-do things when drafting, so I appreciate the nudge on a Monday. And now I’m looking forward to your post on birdwatching… ;-)
I used to have a weaving studio and there are some cultures that deliberately build in a handwoven mistake for luck, to show that the weaver is human, or because nothing can be perfect. Weaving taught me that with any craft, including writing, you can elaborate on a basic pattern, make up your own design, and/or make mistakes that might make the product even better.
What exactly is a mistake in fiction writing? Grammar? Formatting? In actual story, per se, it’s hard to think of a “rule” that hasn’t been broken, or a no-no that some writer has figured out to make a yes-yes. For me, the only mistake is not being interesting on every page.
For me, a mistake in writing is when something — from a phrase of a few words to the entire direction of the story I’m writing — doesn’t feel right. It feels wrong. I’m stalled until I can fix it, which, like knitting, often involves tinking the whole dang thing. A phrase that sounds or feels wrong, often because I’m trying too hard to be clever, is easy to fix with a little thought and, when I’m desperate, a good Thesaurus. But right now I’m stalled in Chapter 2 of Part 3 of my WIP. Is this because the Part 3 I planned for all along is, now that I’ve written drafts of Parts 1 & 2 that I’m happy with, just not right? Aiyeee….
Fiction mistake: using a form of hardware (a phone, a computer, a hand-held calculator, a feature on the microwave oven) before it was invented – when you thought you checked all those details over and over.
Above and beyond getting your character’s name wrong because you had it different when you started writing, and missed one or two places when you changed.
Thinking you had a neat accent word – how someone referred to a particular kind of livestock because he came from a farm family – and then discovering that no, you had invented it, and they don’t refer to the blasted things that way where he comes from. (Hmmm. Maybe they do now. Hmmm.)
Getting your names wrong when an actress does two roles in the same movie.
Lots of ‘mistakes’ possible. Creative fixing ensues when the dadblasted errors are already published.
Realizing 99.999999% of readers will be so engrossed by your writing and plotting that they’ll never notice. :)
Baking and cooking are my hobbies/addictions of choice. I like to play with recipes, swapping out ingredients and making mash-ups of two different dishes — lemonade mix powder for sugar to make a lemon cake from a plain butter cake or a taco-seasoned meat in a lasagne. Mostly it works. It’s a good creative exercise regardless. Once you know the basics of the craft — applying heat to various ingredients — and have a clear idea of the effect you’re going for — good eats — and have developed a skin tough enough to learn from mistakes instead of being discouraged by them, the possibilities are wide open.
Kelsey, what a great analogy. My mother could design and knit a beautiful sweater and carry on a conversation. I had to concentrate to make sure I didn’t make mistakes. I never heard the work “tink” until now. Cute. We also unraveled old sweaters to make new ones–nothing was ever wasted. My relationship with mistakes is to try and try again, changing one thing at a time, to see what works. Sometimes though, it’s easier to ditch the whole thing and start over with a clean slate. I love the blank page, new beginnings! Thank you for this. I enjoyed remembering my mother and her amazing sewing and knitting abilities–she was both analytical and artistic.
Finished: Innumerable pairs of knitted socks with edged heel-pads and Kitchenered toes.
Finished: Several Aran sweaters and Portugese fisherman sweaters.
WIP: Narrative still IP….
I learned to knit when I was six or seven, but it took me three solid attempts before I got the hang of crochet, and I was in my early 30s by then. But I still mostly knit, and I’m getting better at fixing my mistakes. As with writing, though, it can be hard to tell sometimes how much an error is going to bug you later on.