Today I finished knitting a nearly perfect scarf.

Now I'm cheerfully knitting a scarf full of errors and experiments.

Sometimes, I'm steady and patient. When I make a mistake, I pause and carefully consider how to remedy the dropped or double stitch.

Most of the time I'm lazy. I just keep moving forward.

Maybe it's not that I'm lazy, but that there is a certain tempo, and once I've caught the tempo, I really don't want to lose it. Keep those needles glinting.

Musicians understand this. If you are performing on stage and hit an off note, you may not want to back up and play it right. A song flows forward. You keep the beat.

Knitting a scarf can be a song, flowing forward, errors and all.

A scarf can be a carefully crafted strand of perfection, with pauses, curses, and untangling the knotted skein of yarn a valuable part of the process, not visible in the final product.