25,000 Stitches?

Creativity requires the willingness to look stupid. -- John C. Maxwell

It occurred to me today that I taught myself to knit 15 years ago. I was working at a Michaels store at the time and was so entranced by all of the knitting pattern leaflets around the store that I became determined to learn to knit. And so, I went home with a pair of needles and a "how to knit" leaflet and very awkwardly learned to cast on a few stitches.

I've come a long way since then. I've tried out a lot of techniques and read hundreds of patterns and learned which yarns I like to work with and which ones are suitable for projects. It's been over the past couple of years that I've ventured out into designing my own garments. I won't call myself a pattern designer as I have no interest in putting patterns out there for others to decipher, but I do enjoy playing around with ideas in my head and experimenting with colours and textures within my projects.

Here are some of the doodles I've been carrying around all week:

And here are some screenshots I've been squinting at as well:

And so with this in mind, I set out last week to be bold and adventurous and make something spectacular with some of my yarn stash. It will be a sweater with textures and colours and stripes and shapes... entrancing and mesmerizing and delightful...

Behold, the fruits of a week's labour:

It's ok. I'm as unimpressed as you probably are right now as well. I've struck out several times this week with attempts to make this yarn into anything remotely like a garment. You'd think it would have ended up in the garbage bin by now, but something is keeping me going and I think I've finally got something on the go... no, really... it's gonna work out...

I will say that it's a darn good thing that this yarn is so robust because I've ripped it out five times already. The first attempt was a disappointing foray into a Fair Isle colourwork pattern. The second attempt was a top-down sweater with a stripey, doppler-effect transition into the main colour. The rest of the attempts are at least all working towards the same end goal: a cardigan knit sideways with some short-row colourwork thrown in... except I keep screwing it up learning new things about how short-rows work and which stitches will work best for what I am picturing in my mind. It's all terribly creative and innovative in my mind, except the innovation bit sort of wears off after you've knitted over 25,000 stitches and all you have is a strip of garter stitch knitting to show for it.

I guess that's what creativity is all about. It's a willingness to do things over and over and over and over again until your vision actually comes to life. Now that I've written that out, that definition looks suspiciously close to insanity... hmmm...

I have finally got one section of how I want the short row colourwork to work out. It's only now that I understand how the flexible nature of the garter stitch will allow the bumps of the short rows to take up space without a bunch of extra increases to accommodate them. I suppose I could have worked that out with a small sample swatch instead of ripping out thousands of stitches over and over again, but I was SO SURE I knew what I was doing the third/fourth/fifth time. I think they call that "arrogance." I might call it "normal:"

So, I don't have much knitting to show for it, but I really did a LOT of work this week on my projects. I hope next week you can actually see more of them, but who knows how many thousands of stitches I'll have ripped out by then. Here's hoping.

Meanwhile, I've got something spectacular in the oven for dinner that I'm much more confident about. I find food slightly more predictable than yarn, at least. Have a great week!