D is for Details

I have blogged on this before on how edgings are important to crochet. As a quick recap, my mother is a fantastic seamstress. She does amazing work - and when I was learning to sew, she made it clear to me that when you finish your piece properly, it will look 10 times better.

Those lessons also taught me to never cut any corners and do your best. So that is why today's ABC post is "D is for Details."

When you are crocheting (or knitting or making jewelry or sewing or whatever it is you like to do), the truth is this - if there is a tiny little flub, if the yarn splits and you ignore it, or you don't do a stitch quite right - it will show. Perhaps it won't have a big arrow pointing to it, but someone will look at it and think 'hmmm that doesn't look quite right' - or worst case scenario is that it is compared to another that is supposed to be the same, then that little yarn split will seem to jump out.

My Dishcloth

So let's take a little example - a "grandma's favorite" dishcloth I whipped out for myself - personal use item.

So the question we start with is - what'dya think of it? It looks pretty good for my first one ever. I'm not an avid knitter so I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

Ok - it looks decent.

But there is a glaring mistake to my eyes. My mother trained me to look for imperfections in my work in order to have a better product in the end.

Let's take it in a wee bit so you can get a better look.

Do you see it?

Hmmm in case you still can't see my little boo-boo - let's make it bigger! (and add a red arrow *laughing*)

Yup - there it is!

I remember making this mistake. I thought I had missed a stitch and forced a knit where I shouldn't have. I ended up doing a bit of an increase on the row I should not have and got this bizarre looking stitch. If you look further, that little blunder also messed up the stitches immediately around it. My gauge is pretty consistent except when you look around that blunder - the stitch to the left is a little bigger and the stitch above it is smaller and appears more awkward because it was an increase that was not part of a pattern. One little blunder cascaded to a few other issues.

Granted, all of the boo-boos are tiny, but in the end, I know if you put this cloth up to another with better detail, to the untrained eye the other will just appear "better" even if the person cannot put a finger on why.

Considering I kept the orientation of the cloth the same for all three pictures, I would almost bet  you can go back to the first picture of the whole cloth and see the weird stitch - where you know the weird stitch is. Am I right?

It took me ages to accept that if it is something industrial, like a washcloth, or if it is for me, then sometimes it is ok to leave it (which I did for this dishcloth, and how fortuitous considering I was able to use it as an example for this post); however, I have to admit, I will usually go back and fix it even if my eyes are the only to ever see the item in question.

By paying attention to detail, you will create a better product.

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For more ABC link party posts, visit An Accidental Knitter's blog.