Peace of Mind Organizing

Lace knitting: Not unlike organizing

31 July 2008

Last night, as I worked on the Estonian Garden Wrap, a seemingly complicated and sort of overwhelming (for this novice lace knitter) knitting pattern, I realized that broken down to its simplest elements, it’s really pretty easy. And that’s not unlike any overwhelming project, like getting organized. Let me explain.

First, take a look at this picture of the Estonian Garden Wrap. It’s pretty, isn’t it? But to me, it’s sort of daunting to consider knitting.

See the middle part—the main body of the shawl that’s comprised of the small lace pattern? That’s the part I’m working on now (the pattern has you knit the center part first, then add the ends). That lace pattern takes eight rows to create. That eight-row section is called a pattern. There are 41 patterns in the center section of the shawl.

Each individual row of the project is 103 stitches. Seven of those stitches are the border stitches on either end. That leaves 96 stitches for the rest of the row. And those 96 stitches are divided into twelve eight-stitch sections. (Each one makes that little lace pattern). Each eight-stitch section is called a pattern repeat.

I’ve used stitch markers (actually little hair rubber bands) to separate each eight-stitch pattern repeat. Each of the pattern repeats in a row is identical. So basically this big lace shawl boils down to knitting one eight-stitch pattern repeat at a time.

I do one pattern repeat after the other and soon the row is finished. I purl the whole next row (except the border stitches) and then start the next row, another dozen eight-row sections, which have a slightly different stitch pattern. I do that twice more and the pattern is finished. I do that 40 more times and the vast majority of the shawl is finished. Then I start a whole new pattern for the ends.

The cool thing is that, for this main section of the shawl, the eight-stitch pattern repeat is very easy. It includes a couple of types of decreases and a couple of yarn overs and that’s it. I have to pay attention to make sure I’m doing everything in the right order, but it’s not tough at all.

How is this like organizing?

When I’m faced with a really large organizing/decluttering project (my own or a client’s), it can feel really overwhelming to think about even where to start. But if the project is divided into individual tasks and we focus on one of those tasks at a time, the job eventually gets done. It can be important to do the tasks in the right order (though not always). But if I do each task one at a time and just keep going—taking breaks, as in knitting, for physical and mental health—the job unfolds and eventually is completed.

Here’s another similarity. When you’re working on a project this large with so many individual components, it’s probably not necessary for each component to be executed absolutely perfectly. Any imperfections are lost in in the scope of the overall project.

It’s like that old saying, How do you eat an elephant? “One bite at a time.” Only now I think of it as, “How do you knit a lace wrap?” “One pattern repeat at a time” Even if I only do one row in a sitting (and I’ll doubtless do at least two rows in a sitting, since the second row is simple purling), the lace will eventually be knitted.

Today I really want to tackle a little home organizing project I’ve been neglecting: going through my bathroom closet to weed out the bins of potions and lotions and first aid supplies that have proliferated there (and been very messy about it). I have five largish bins of stuff that at one time were nicely organized and labeled. It’s been bugging me, but I haven’t taken the time to deal with it. Now I’m going to take the lace-shawl approach: I’ll take one bin and empty, sort, and purge it today. Repeat four more times and the job will be done!

Tagged with: decluttering, empowerment, knitting, lace, motivation, perfectionism, productivity

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