However, starting 6th grade, we had to confirm that we retained the knowledge that we'd learned, which meant another test. I failed! I was going to have to re-do the last module! Oh the shame and agony. I don't know if I'd ever failed a test before then. I cried in class.

2/

Mr. Swanson, who was really a great guy, took me aside to console me, and he told me about the Navajo rug weavers, who purposefully include mistakes in their rugs. He didn't go into the spiritual implications of not competing with God, who is the only one allowed to be perfect, or leaving a spirit line so their souls wouldn't be trapped in the weaving. But he did emphasize that aspiring to perfection is fraught with disappointment. Life is a lot easier if you allow yourself to make mistakes! Is this rug perfect? No! Look, there's a mistake right here! There might be others too, but I don't need to bother searching for them. If I were trying for a perfect rug, I could spend hours going back and forth over every stitch, which is a stressful waste of time.

3/

Now, Mr. Swanson's suggestion that I make a mistake in every test, so that I could point to it and say that it's not perfect, was NOT something I was OK with! Those 100% marks are nice! But he allowed a compromise: if I ever got a test back, and there was a mistake, I could simply smile and say, "That one's for Mr. Swanson."

4/

As I grew older, the tests changed and my perfectionism slipped into the background, but it does come back! Those of you who follow me here have seen me talk about searching for and fixing mistakes in my knitting projects. This headband is the second one I've created of this exact same pattern, in part because I made too many mistakes in the first! Knitting is a learning process, and learning how to recognize and fix mistakes before taking them off the needles is a useful skill to pick up. In this second headband, I went back and fixed some errors many rows down just because I could. Because it was good practice.

5/

If I, like a rug weaver, were making things for sale, it would be a different issue: is the time spent fixing past mistakes worth the additional money I'd make off the finished piece compared to what I'd get if the mistake were left in place? For tiny mistakes not likely to be noticed by the customer, probably not! Perfectionism becomes a profit eater.

6/

But here, I'm making things for myself, or for friends. Time fixing errors is only keeping me from finishing the project and starting up a new one. It's much more acceptable to me to put in a little extra effort on things where I know the mistakes will stare me in the face each time I wear them!

7/

On this "Sightseeing Headband #2" I had gone over the patterns and the stitches multiple times, and when I put it in the water before blocking, I thought it was perfect. But as SOON as I pulled it out of the water, before I even laid it out to block, this bright spot of purple glared up at me.

Was it a loose stitch? A big pilled bit of yarn? NO! It was a mistake: purple that should have been black, shining out because its purple neighbors joined together to hold up the mistake and set it out from the black stitches.

8/