The limits of my memory

In my efforts to follow the craft inspiration of our travels, I bought a grey-green cotton thread. Quickly rejecting the idea of crocheting a doily, I decided to knit a scarf, dresser or neck. We’ll see how it goes.
My first choice in pattern was too complicated. I restarted it several times after messing up. What was the perfect pattern? Believe it, or not, is an optimization problem. I want a small project that I can pull out of my backpack anywhere, on a train or in a cafe. I want to have the fanciest pattern that I can remember.
Memorizing a pattern is a process. At first it’s one stitch at a time. You have to go through it several times before you understand how the structure is built up. If I might use a mathematical metaphor, with knitting, I see discontinuities, vector fields, even manifolds. My mind wanderers as I place the knitting pattern in a context that I can remember.
The center of the scarf repeats every eight rows. I did it probably four times, with the instructions close at hand, before attempting to go “off-book”, testing my memory.
Now I can work it and carry on a conversation, on a train or in a cafe. I give myself permission to mess-up, as long as I can catch the dropped stitch before it unravels. I will look back and think about the gorgeous sights I was seeing or the enlightened conversations I was participating in, when I deviated from the pattern.