There was a young woman, a friend of mine back in college, who had a single room in Treudley Hall.

I don’t remember how she scored a room all to herself while the rest of us were three to a room, stacked in triple-decker bunkbeds, our clothes crammed into closets one third the size of hers.

This girl was freckled and had thick, lively auburn hair. I suspect not all of us students noticed her keen intelligence and unusual composure, but everyone noticed her ever-present knitting bag. While some of us were waving signs and shouting in the streets, she was sitting on weighty boards and in important committees and knitting, knitting, knitting.

She always stitched a deliberate mistake into her sweaters, in the spirit of Persian carpet makers who wove mistakes into their work as reminders that only God is perfect. (We believed this tale then but it’s not true, at least not of Persian carpet weavers.)

I don’t have to add deliberate mistakes to my knitting. I’m a natural!

For example, I just finished a Norwegian Resistance hat. I used a pattern, didn’t try to wing it even though it’s a simple project. I made a special trip to The Knitting Bee out there where Quioccasin almost runs into Three Chopt Road to get the correct yarn and the right size circular needles to achieve the correct gauge. But after I’d knitted about four inches of ribbing and another inch of stockinette stitch—the hat was obviously too large.

Somehow I was not using the needles I’d just bought, but a size larger!

Luckily, my husband has a big head so I didn’t have to rip out five inches of 104 stitches per round of mostly ribbing.

I switched to the smaller needles.

But then how did I have an uneven number of stitches? Rats! a mistake in decreasing. (This was the radio’s fault. Stravinsky is not conducive to placid knitting.) I followed the pattern and just kept decreasing and ended up with four stitches at the end, exactly like I was supposed to. Don’t ask me how.

Anyway, it’s a hat!

And the perfection of God is not forgotten.