There's always another way

If you don’t want to make a cathedral out of steel, try flying buttresses. (Image by Rodney Bamford)

A few weeks ago, I decided that I would design my own knitted leg warmers.

I sketched out a schematic and chart, knitted some small swatches of the basic pattern, and then started in on the first leg warmer.

Things went okay and they came out pretty good. However, the back side, where I had done the shaping, looked a a little unrefined.

Shaping, in knitting, is done by either increasing the number of stitches to make something bigger or decreasing to make it smaller. Done well, it can actually be attractive or even decorative; mine wasn’t.

Attempting to get around the problem, I made a second pair of leg warmers with minimal shaping — basically, just a tube that stretched for the widest part of the calf and remained slack around the ankle. These came out okay, too, but they didn’t wow me. I had been pondering the problem ever since.

And then a fresh idea came to me when I was thinking about what to wear one day.

I realized that, instead of beginning each leg warmer at the ankle and working my way up, requiring increases to accommodate the calf, I could start at the knee and work down, creating a prettier line of decreases.

I had spent days developing these patterns and many hours knitting them, but this simple possibility had never occurred to me.

And notably, it didn’t occur to me while I was knitting. Leg warmers were the farthest thing from my mind.

The metaphorical resonance of this moment wasn’t lost on me. How many times had I been stuck on a problem and found (or been handed) a solution that was the opposite of what I had been doing? How many problems could I solve if I were willing to give up on the way I was approaching it and could see it from a completely different angle?

On a more practical level, here was a good reminder of the power of letting go of problems and stepping away from them in order to create the time and distance that allows the subconscious to work at the solution without perceived effort.

So often, I have pushed away possibilities, assuming that relentless, brute force would give me the results I was looking for. But even when it worked, the cost was too high. The best ideas outcomes have always come from an attitude of playfulness and experimentation in which I’ve been open to exploring whatever comes up, even if it’s weird or ridiculous. Even when you’ve thought of everything, there’s always another way to approach a situation.

What does the “upside down” solution to your problem look like? Could it be worth a shot?