Two exams down and graded, one more to go.

Soon it will begin - the "Can I get extra credit" (even though the semester is officially over), the "You figured up my grade wrong!" (usually no but rarely yes), the "Can I still hand in this assignment?" (that was due in February).

I knit on the dropped-stitch Moonlight Mohair scarf in the first exam (and graded the first exam during the second). And I got to thinking about dropped stitches and mistakes. Double-wrapping and then dropping the extra wraps is a common mistake new knitters make - I know I did it - and it leads to unintentional "lace" in the project. But when you make that "mistake" intentionally, the results are quite attractive. Likewise with dropping stitches and the Clapotis - normally, a dropped and laddered stitch is an occasion to say a swear and get out the crochet hook, but on Clapotis, they're planned for, they're part of the design.

And I think everyone who sews or quilts has run up against the "it's not a bug, it's a feature" or "It's a design-element" aspect - where you take a mistake and turn it into something that doesn't look like a mistake.

But then again, that's a little different. That's not doing it deliberately (at least, not the first time). In knitting, with the dropped stitches or the extra-wraps-and-drop, those are intentional. Part of the pattern.

It's interesting to me that something that in some contexts is a mistake, is actually quite beautiful in other contexts. I suppose I could drag that into deeper philisophical waters if I wanted to. It's an interesting idea - just like there are no plants that are "bad" plants, that weeds are only plants growing where they are not desired, there are no "bad" stitches in knitting, just stitches you didn't intend to do at a particular point.

It's also interesting that what is a mistake at one stage of the game, at a later point in one's development, becomes an option - you can choose to double-wrap and drop intentionally once you've learned the mechanics of knitting. Perhaps it's not unlike how things in one's personality that are unattractive or ungainly when one is a teenager, develop into something more tolerable - or even, more proper and pleasant - with a little aging.

I don't know. I like the idea of doing a stitch that looks like a mistake, but turns out to look really nice. Another fun thing about the double wrap and drop stitch is that it takes less yarn and makes a very open fabric. I'd be tempted to buy, say, six skeins of the Moonlight Mohair (but in a different color; the rainbow is nice for a scarf but might be a bit much on a larger project) and do a version of the scarf that was perhaps three times as wide and a bit longer, and use it as a shawl. (But I probably won't as I was seduced into buying one of the Jo-Ann's novelty yarns - it's a boucle called "Bamboo" - because you could get a book of patterns with it and it contained a drop stitch wrap. And a girl really doesn't need more than one drop stitch wrap, I think). But it's an attractive thing, and would be a way of making a shawl that required less yarn than a more solid shawl of a similar size. Perhaps also, it might be fun as a multi-yarn project, where you changed out every couple of rows, or some such thing.

But there's something almost...metaphysical...to me about the idea of a mistake that isn't, really, and that what is a bad error in one place is the whole fundament of a design in another. It's something my brain is chewing on and trying to make symbolic of other things in life. (I'm bad that way; everything is symbolic to me. Dropping a glass in the kitchen in the morning is a bad omen, that sort of thing).