Sometimes You Freak Out and Have to Start Over
Sigh, sometimes you just need to have a meltdown and have to start over. I have been working on my newest design and it hasn’t been going all that well. Don’t get me wrong I love the motif and just everything about what is behind this design. I am working on a collection of cowls inspired by my birth country Peru. Both the motifs and the colors take inspiration from traditional Peruvian textiles and ancient Incan symbols and architecture. For those unfamiliar with Peruvian textiles two words can easily describe them, bright and colorful. Peruvians as most South and Central Americans love to play with bright colors. I spent days searching high and low for the perfect colorways and luckily, I found some in the end.
The goal was to release the first pattern on my birthday and normally that wouldn’t be a problem I had months to figure it out. Well then I decided to knit and publish another cowl and that took a significant amount of time and meant I had less time to develop this new cowl. What also threw a wrench in my plans was the fact I would be on vacation over my birthday giving me 2 less weeks of knitting time. Again, wouldn’t be such a big problem except this particular motif has a large stitch count to the pattern making it difficult to get the width I wanted. It was either going to be too small or too large. So there was a lot of hemming and hawing over the size and of course I choice the larger width and once it was finished I knew I had made a mistake. It was just too wide and if I was anything other than a crazy type A perfectionist it wouldn’t have been a problem, but I am so it was.
What I couldn’t get over was how perfect the colors were. When you look at these colors, knit in this motif it screams Peru. Then the doubt just started pouring in. Should I completely start over with all new colors or stick with the original ones and re-knit it knowing the width was going to be smaller than I wanted. Back and for I went for hours. Through in a ton of self-doubt and me questioning things I never before questioned. It grew my seed of doubt into a full-blown tree. I spent the next several hours having a full-blown knitting meltdown where I questioned all my choices. Let me tell you it wasn’t a pretty sight. I spent that whole time questioning everything I thought I knew and wanted this series to be.
In the end I realized I was trying to please others and worried what they might think if I went with my original choices. I worried I’d be judged based on the yarns I was using, that they would be less than or not the popular choice. If I had more confidence I would have just stuck to my guns and not even questioned my decisions, but I worked myself up and it got me nowhere other than completely stressed out for no real reason. I started designing because I wanted to make things I like, and I didn’t want to care what others thought. Well clearly, I let the self-doubt and the worry of what others might think get to me. A lot of pain and heart ache could have been avoided if I hadn’t let other voices get into my head, but hey I’m human this happens to all of us. I’m still not sure I made the right decision in my yarn choices, but hey sometimes we just need to say F*&@ it I don’t care what others think, I am doing this for me. If tomorrow comes and I start all over again that’s okay because I am human. Sometimes you just need to start over and know that it is okay to start over, it doesn’t mean you have failed and hopefully by starting over it will be even better than the original design. Sigh, knitting confessions.
