One hundred sweaters

Here’s five to start with.

After spending most of the last quarter of last year making a dining-room table-full of holiday gifts, I decided that I wanted to knit some things for myself.

I made a shawl and a hat and some fingerless mitts; a cape and a couple pairs of leg-warmers. But what I really wanted to make was a sweater.

And then I spent hours combing Ravelry (a website for knitters and crocheters) for juuuust the right one. I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, so I considered designing my own.

But even though that would be an interesting learning experience, it wasn’t the right one for right now. So I went back to Ravelry for more hours of searching through patterns.

Eventually, it dawned on me that my reluctance to commit to a pattern was because I was thinking of a sweater as a significant undertaking. I spent less time on my choice of college!

This really wasn’t a big deal. I could just pick one and make it. And then another, and another.

Instead of carefully curating a library of sweater patterns and a wardrobe of sweaters, I could make a hundred sweaters in various shapes and styles. This sweater would be one of the first.

I suspect that by the time I’ve made one hundred sweaters, I will be faster and better at making them. I may even be able to design one without a lot of trouble.

Seeing things in this new way allowed me to quickly choose a pattern and get down to work. Just a few days later, the sweater is almost done.

Ironically, it doesn’t even matter whether I end up making one hundred sweaters. Adopting a broader perspective helped me to make just one.

I have found a lot of merit to moving laterally, using variations on a theme to strengthen a learner’s skills without increasing the level of difficulty. For instance, I tend to have my students write many short essays instead of a few longer ones.

But there does come a time when we might need to level up. If what you really want to do is write a novel, writing short stories isn’t the same in terms of structure and stamina. And if your heart’s desire is to build a boat, nothing else will do.

When you’ve done all of the preparation and developed the necessary component skills, it’s time to make the leap and undertake the big project. But you’re not writing The Novel, building The Boat, or knitting The Sweater — you’re just creating a novel, a boat, a sweater. One of many. If it’s just one of a hundred, how much more freedom do you have to try stuff, mess up, learn how to fix it, and keep going?

For me, thinking this way created an exciting shift. Try it on and see how it fits you.