Saturday, November 21, 2009

Is perseverance a skill?

A couple of weeks ago, I had company for the weekend. While I was not the only knitter in the bunch, I was the only one knitting. I showed everyone the Baby Surprise Jacket and the Bog Jacket, and everyone was impressed with the cleverness of the designs.

What bothered me was how one person in the crowd attributed the cleverness to ME. I do not design the patterns, all I do is implementing them. The only talent required is perseverance and a lot of patience. It helps to be somewhat simpleminded, entertained by yarn overs and bobbles and changes in color, but otherwise, it is just a matter of sitting and knitting. My friend refused to believe I was not gifted.

This friend sews, something I have little patience for, so you would think she would understand my point of view. But maybe, because she finds knitting a struggle, she feels better believing it takes special talent? What do you think?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I find a lot of people think knitting is hard. I did too, until I found knitting videos to learn from on knittinghelp.com. My main problem in learning to knit was the cast on and the first row. People do think that it's all my ingenuity, but really it's the pattern, being able to read instructions, and sticking to the hard parts. I guess it's just like everything else in life. I would imagine learning to walk was much more difficult, but no one ever comments on that!

Toni said...

Tough call on that one. I think there is some talent involved in knitting, even from a pattern, because when I look on Ravelry, there's a lot of variety in the projects even from the same pattern. So....I usually just say something like "It's the most amazing pattern--the designer is super talented" and let it go. After all, for every EZ pattern out there, there's a pattern done by a bad designer and I'll spend a month fixing the pattern to make it look like it was actually made for a human, and people will credit all my work to the lousy designer......

Hm, still not over that ribbed yoke episode it seems......:)