*sigh*

Ruffle is ripped out, which does allow me to correct a smaller error I had made and just planned to live with. Just getting it back on the needles and one row knit was all I could face tonight. Now I'm working my way through a crochet round of a pineapple doily. Yeah, you read that right. And it's pink. Wanna make something of it?

I know I've written about this before but I'm too tired to go looking for the link, and I'm sure I'm not saying anything new anyway, so whatever. One of the great gifts that knitting (and now crocheting) has given me is the gift of learning to let go of my perfectionism. I'm in recovery from a variety of...how shall we put it, non-life-enhancing behaviors, and perfectionism was part of my core dysfunction. Now, I'm all for working hard, doing the best I can most of the time (and I still get "wow, you're really hard on yourself" more times than I can count), and all that good stuff, but that's very different from perfectionism, for me. Perfectionism renders me paralyzed, because if it has to be perfect, one can't make mistakes (or be human), and therefore, it's terrifying to start. I'm not sure when all that therapy started to sink in and allow me to think things like "this is hard, and I might not do a great job, but I'm still going to do it" or, as I've been thinking lately, "wow, I really suck at crocheting, but I'd like to get better, and the way to get better is to just do it." I am a kinesthetic learner in many ways, it's right behind audio learning for me, so the way to learn is to do. And, I'm learning that I can do things simply because I enjoy the process of doing them, and worry less about the results. In part, because I'm learning to recognize when the results matter, and when they don't. I mean, really, if I have an imperfect pink doily? Who the hell really cares, if I had fun making it, and maybe increased my skills a little.