Knitting a Scarf: Learning to Release Perfectionism
Balance comes when I celebrate the fragile and the incomplete, the missing stitches and the holes.
For many people, January is a time of rebirth and change, casting off the previous year and stepping forward with a clean slate. For many more people, January means reinvention. It means tackling new things and improving yourself, pushing your limits and becoming better than you were. In other words, the New Year is a completely New You. I remember reading somewhere that January has the highest rate of gym-related injuries. People push and push in pursuit of perfection and end up hurt. As a person with big dreams and high standards, I often find myself pushing hard, focusing on my work with less emphasis on a life-balance. A musician certainly faces the risk of injury in the pursuit of perfection! Like a newly-resolved person on January first, I often throw myself into the hypothetical gym and at the heaviest machine, pushing for improvement and success rabidly. So this January, instead of pushing and grinding away, I decided to do something different. I would focus on a project where mistakes were okay, and in fact, humanizing: I would knit a scarf!
I had fallen in love with a scarf I’d seen online. It was wide and plush with vibrant colors and a cozy, brushed texture. I had seen it at fashion weeks, sweeping the hems of people’s outfits, so long and luxurious. However, more research revealed a rub. I didn’t have $400 lying around for this scarf! Luckily, my mom knows a thing or two about knitting and said she would help me find the materials to make a similar scarf myself without the luxury cost.
There was just one thing. Unlike my mom, I’m not great at knitting. Mistakes seem to sneak their way in regardless of how careful I am. Not five minutes after I started my scarf, I dropped a stitch and made a hole. Rats! I wanted my scarf to be perfect, to be beautiful and even and error-free. A couple rows later, I realized I had knitted two stitches together. Ugh! I sat with my project in my hands, getting frustrated. I looked at the three cakes of yarn I was going to use, thought about the length of the scarf, and thought about how long it would take me. If I try to do this perfectly and backtrack to fix every mistake, it won’t be any fun at all! Mistakes were going to happen because I was learning, and if I wanted to have a perfect scarf, I should just buy a machine-made one.
Reflecting more deeply, I realized that these mistakes make the scarf mine, homemade, and human. Here, two interconnected Japanese philosophies come to mind. Wabi sabi finds beauty in the imperfections and missing parts of something, while kintsugi physically manifests this concept, honoring the fractures and breaks of an object and highlighting them. Beyond the imperfections in physical creations, I couldn’t help but wonder how this would apply to music. Thinking about the musical performances that have meant the most to me, I’ve found that they haven’t been the perfect performances—they’ve been the ones that were vulnerable, emotional, and raw. They were this way because the performer was pursuing connection instead of perfection. Forgetting about perfectionism, they allowed the music to breathe, become human, and be intelligible. For lack of a better metaphor, the whole scarf was presented and admired, instead of tracing through every stitch and lamenting the ones that were messy.
My January 2026 will be about rest, rejuvenation, and allowing things to be imperfect. Do I have goals for my playing and my development? Of course. Am I going to rest in the fact that this is all a journey and mistakes are an integral part? Yes. I’ve found that to be a creative and to take care of myself is much easier when I allow space for things to not be exactly what I want them to be right away. Balance comes when I celebrate the fragile and the incomplete, the missing stitches and the holes. I’m excited to work on this scarf and to practice releasing my perfectionism. I look forward to a year where I am more understanding with myself, my work, and my art.