Never stop embracing the chance to learn something new.

Sometimes our biggest mistakes lead to our biggest triumphs. As we set about resolving the errors, we may find a new approach to a routine chore that we’d never thought about before. The old saying, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat” (which is pretty gruesome when you think about it, why would you want to even think about doing that?) basically means you have the opportunity to think about exploring ideas and come up with a better way of doing something.

When you become proficient at a particular skill, you can sometimes get stuck in a rut and don’t tend to think about trying it another way. You can easily stay with what you’re happy with and muddle along, but maybe learning how to do something in a totally new way will actually improve your skills and take you to the next level. 

An example of this with my own crafting skill set would be embracing new techniques with my knitting and crochet. When I was a child, I was taught how to knit by my Nana, she showed me the basics; how to cast on and off and the basic knit and purl stitches. For many years, I stuck to those basic skills, but then started played around with them, progressing to cable knits, adding colour work, learning new stitches etc. 

One of the biggest things that I discovered and it’s not necessarily a mistake, but maybe not the best choice for the project, was how I cast on. For many years I used the basic cast on method that my Nana taught me for everything I knitted, but actually, for some items, it was not the best method. When I took up knitting again a few years back, the world of knitting was just becoming ‘trendy’ and ‘cool’. There were fabulous businesses like Wool and The Gang and We Are Knitters shouting to the world that knitting isn’t just for old grannies making booties for babies. It was the new thing to do in your spare time and had a huge number of people were embracing the ‘handmade’ revolution (not that that has never been a thing before now, trends come around again and again).

Thanks to all the wonderful tutorials that I found on websites like WATG and WAK, I started to learn so many new techniques. Learning a new way to cast on was a revelation, I was really excited. The Cable Cast on and Long Tail cast on methods were totally alien to me, but how wonderful they are when you need a looser edge to your project. 

The opportunity to learn can never be underestimated. If you’re stuck in a rut with your crafting and fancy trying something new, do it! Get onto Pinterest to find some inspiration or search for a new stitch that you’ve never tried before. Whenever you master a new skill, it adds to that feeling of self-satisfaction and there really is no better feeling.