The Business of Knitting

If I knitted something with a complicated pattern, where I constantly had to be counting rows and stitches, I often made a mistake the moment my mind began to wander. Sometimes I would rip out rows to correct the problem, sometimes not, but I began to appreciate these mistakes as small lessons in mindfulness or humility and as expressions of the spirit or soul of the knitting, which seemed to exist apart from me, the knitter. My experience of knitting was enriched the more I knew of spiritual matters, and vice versa. And I found that once I could accept my lack of perfection in both areas with humor and grace, the whole business of knitting, as well as of living, became far more pleasurable to me.

--Susan Gordon Lydon, The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice