Concept fail... lesson learned... life moves on...

Hello, everyone!!! Well, someone has been lax in blogging... hmm... So hello once more and let's just dive in today! Since my last post, I have done TONS of epic, fun, wild, crazy, mundane, interesting, boring, private, public, stressful, stressless, and AWESOME things! To recount them would take much too long and as such, let us gloss over the past and look to the future. My designing bug has KICKED in the door, SHOT all the other knitting projects, and is holding me HOSTAGE with the concepts, ideas, and fun of sketching and bringing that sketch into reality. I am working on 4 designs on the needles at the moment, with who knows how many on paper awaiting that fateful day when the sketch becomes reality and the reality becomes a pattern. It is truly a process of wonder, as my brain churns out a design onto paper, my hands wind the yarn into a cake or ball, my needles take over and a fabric forms in my hands. Not all things are a success story, but the key is to learn from the experiment and move on. Sometimes the experiment simply makes one try harder and sometimes it was simply an experiment in thought. But no matter the outcome, something comes from it. Take this example: I had had this sketch done for a long time. I picked it up, cast it on (after figuring out numbers, progression, shape, increase, etc.), and finished the first half. I was ecstatic and began the second half of the design. Think car hitting a brick wall at 60 miles an hour. It wasn't going to work. I knew it and could see it, but somehow my brain denied itself of the ability to accept the reality of this fact: It would not work. Wrestling with the beast, as I affectionately called it, for the next week, I finally accepted its fate as well as mine and ripped it out. I didn't give up, but rather like a stubborn mule, fought against the constraints of reality. I succumbed to the cold, hard fact and with my submission, I frogged the project. My friends who had seen the concept take shape implored me not to go that far and rip it out, but I, being the enlightened knitter who had listened to the shawl's final gasps and pleas for death, resolutely and without hesitation destroyed it. I still have the sketch and the concept, as well as the notes that I had written, but the shawl design is simply to be retired and rest. I have moved on past the whole experiment and learned from it to trust my gut. I knew once I started that second section that it would not work. I knew it. But I, being the optimist I am, stubbornly refused to believe that it just wouldn't work out in the end. I also learned from the ordeal, that while I should trust myself, I should also take a breather and look at anything before ripping the entirety out. So now I have a shawl concept that was attempted and failed to give the results, but I have learned from that little sketch to try. After all it is simply sticks and string and a bit of time mixed in, but at its focal point, knitting is changeable and as such, re-start-able. Will I attempt this concept again? Maybe, maybe not. But even if I don't, I still have the knowledge from the experience and now have that power in my hands to try something. Thanks for reading and I shall attempt to continue to write more frequently. May your needles stay sharp and your yarn be free from the curse of the tangle-zombies!