Why I'm no longer striving for perfection

and an invitation to spend these last, long days of summer with summer knitting

Me, in my much-worn—and still freshly-made looking—Oolong Tank (pattern by Aimee Sher) and knit in a summer weight yarn base I’m debuting in my shop today.

I’ve spent a good, long portion of my life aiming for perfection: to be the perfect mom, to be a star employee, a super-dooper business owner, to nail my goals and stick the landing, to optimize my time, and for the floors in my house to always be perfectly clean. To add sparkle to my family’s holidays, and to perfectly live my values of equity and belonging.

It will surprise no one but me to realize that perfect isn’t possible. Good enough sometimes isn’t even possible. But it took a global pandemic, and all the ways my family and I suffered and sometimes thrived but mostly endured, for me to realize that, yes, I had actually been striving for perfection all along. And, I’m not ever going to get there.

It’s easy to say that no one’s perfect, but if I sit with the idea for a minute, if I let myself go deeper, I can see all the ways that our culture reinforces that if we’re not reaching for perfection, we’re not really reaching high enough. We should have high expectations for ourselves and our kids. We should be our best selves and live our best lives. We should be flexible and resilient, and we should see failure as just another stepping stone to success. Coded in all of these messages is individual perfection.

I’ve come to realize, though, that where I find the most nourishment and the most comfort is to accept that I’m not ever going to get to perfect. That practice is good enough. That learning is good enough. That simply being is good enough.

About a year ago, when I was at probably my lowest pandemic point, I started a concerted mindfulness practice (I took the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program through UCSF). It felt like a last-ditch attempt to try and knit pieces of myself back together after the worst of the pandemic years and my own skyrocketing anxiety and worry. The program didn’t work as I thought. It didn’t “fix” me.

And, of course, it also worked so much more than I thought. It turns out: the every day doing is what helps, not the perfection.

This is what knitting is like for me, too. And it feels good to remember this. The doing is what matters. The slow, steady stitches, some of them knit with anxiety and too-tight tension, some of them knit with the easy relaxation of a late summer day. They can smooth out with blocking, and even if they don’t, it’s okay.

The doing is what matters.

Maybe for you, too?

These late summer days, dahlias are blooming abundantly, and there are so, so many tomatoes at my local farmer’s market. Most of the US (indeed most of the world, save a few Southern hemisphere spots) is hot, and it probably won’t cool down for at least another month, maybe more. San Francisco is still in the midst of Fogust and our hot, lazy days will come in late September and October.

Rather than speed towards fall knitting and squishy wools, I’d like to encourage you to linger a little with these summer days. To take pleasure in cool, lightweight, summer knitting.

Take time to knit yourself a summer-weight top

I’ve shared before how knitting summer tops at summer-weight gauges is a lot of knitting, but even so, there’s still time to knit and wear a summer-weight top. (As much as we all love fall, it’s still a little ways off.)

Today, I am debuting a new yarn base in my shop, and I can confidently recommend it to you as perfect for summer and warm climate knitting. I have put this one through its paces with lots of knitting, washing and wearing, and I am so excited to introduce you to it.

Please meet Dolce cotton-wool:

• It’s a light fingering-weight yarn, with a generous 550+ yards per skein.

• It’s 75% US-grown cotton and 25% US-grown wool. (This matters to me because it means farm and manufacturing jobs stay here in the US, and the shipping has as low an environmental impact as possible.)

• It’s non-superwash.

• Its ideal gauge, from my perspective, is 26 to 30 sts to 4 inches.

• It makes a whisper-light, absolutely floofy fabric. It feels like a cloud.

• The wool content gives just enough bounce that it feels pleasant running through my fingers when I knit.

• It’s slightly slubby, with little cotton poufs in it (which you can see in the skeins above) and that makes such an interesting fabric texture.

What can you knit with it? Interestingly, this base seems to be a twin of the former-Yoth Yarns’ Best Friend. When that yarn debuted, several high-profile designers released patterns with it, so there are lots of pattern ideas linked in my shop listings.

I knit Aimee Sher’s beautiful Oolong Tank in a slightly tighter gauge than the pattern called for. I’ve worn and washed my Oolong so much this summer, and the fabric still looks brand new, with that beautiful slubby texture to the stockinette portions.

I hope newsletter subscribers will scoop up all the skeins in this week’s shop update. (I have 14 colorways available, and at least a full sweater quantity of each colorway.) Right now, this base is special release, but if it’s popular, I’ll stock more and bring it back every summer. And I really want to, because even though I’m giving up on the idea of perfection, this yarn is also my perfect summer and warm climate yarn.

Today, however you are feeling about your knitting or your own quest for perfection or acceptance of your imperfections, I hope that you will find a bit of rest and grace. I hope you can be here, now, with summer knitting and slow days and ice cream and all the things that nourish you. Imperfectly.