from the pen of icarus blake

This is an age of polished media.  I’ve talked about it before in my review of Videodrome, on how the polish often paints over the grime and devalues the time put into something imperfect.  I pick apart and apart and apart my crochet projects because I’ve missed a stitch, misread the pattern, and the project is no longer perfect.  I don’t have the right tension, I didn’t pick up the right yarn weight.  I sit there paralyzed with my half-finished project in my hands and abandon it on the pile.  Later, I frog the piece and wrap up the yarn and try again.

And still, what I create is never perfect.

So I have this enduring issue of finishing things.  I spend all my time planning and plotting, building beautiful tools and illustrations, world maps with detail down to the roads.  And then nothing.  I put pen to paper, and realize I’ve done too much and have nowhere to start.  I figure I’ll come back to it later, then ten years down the line it’s still sitting there.  Waiting for me.

So a few days ago, I finished something.  A crochet scarf, with some of the nice rayon yarn I’ve been hoarding since 2022.  I made it twice, actually: the first time, I read the pattern wrong.  It didn’t suit what I wanted to use it for, so I finished off the skein, looked at it hard, and immediately frogged the entire thing.  Then I made it again, and this time I finished it.

I meant it as a hair scarf, but the yarn was too thick.  It doesn’t sit on the head right, I don’t have enough hair to fill it out (and that’s saying something).  The ties I made to secure it were too short, but I tried it out anyway.  As it turns out, it makes a fine scarf.  While I was disappointed I couldn’t use it for the intended purpose, I realized that I had a skein and a half still at my disposal — and a brand new ambitious idea.  

A mandala altar cloth, perhaps?  A shawl?  Who knows how far the rest of this yarn might take me, a blessing in my favorite colors.  Something new I made with my own two hands, not perfect but finished and proud.  A labor, and something I can say I put into the world of my own accord.  Of my own hard work.

“Draw a crazy picture, 
Write a nutty poem, 
Sing a mumble-gumble song, 
Whistle through your comb. 
Do a loony-goony dance 
'Cross the kitchen floor, 
Put something silly in the world 
That ain't been there before.”
- Shel Silverstein