WIP Wednesday

Happy Wednesday :)

Last week, I talked about my Gex test knit...which is totally still happening.

This was taken last night, hence dark photo and my laptop (yes, I'm watching Archer). 

But I'm not here to talk about that one....that one is just in the midst of Stockinette Hell for awhile. I think I have another 6" to knit before it's the length I need. 

I'm here to talk about a design I've been working on for far too long. To be honest, the (very loose) idea came into my head quite awhile ago. It was supposed to be the second half of my Fire & Ice Socks. The Fire Socks are done, published, and fabulous. So I started the design for the Ice Socks. Last fall. Seriously, I started doing some charting and doodles and such in August. I finally had something I thought would work around January. I started knitting because swatching is for weenies. 

Aaaaaaaand things just were not going very well. The idea was that the design would spiral down the leg of the sock and then the foot would be knit without the spiral. 

Yeah, it didn't do that. At all. Not even a little bit. Plus, the decreases and increases were pulling the design in weird directions. 

So, back to the charting.....fixed the issue and started again. 

Now the decreases and increases were still pulling the chart in weird directions.

Back to the chart.....fixed the issue and started AGAIN.

This photo was from this past Saturday afternoon from my table at a nearby Starbucks. 

I got through the first pattern repeat and got into the second......and, seriously, I'm so frustrated that I'm considering scrapping the idea entirely.

Now the increases and decreases are changing the length of the side panels. The main pattern panel is perfectly fine and I don't know that I need to change anything with respect to that. But the side panels are dragging downward and it just doesn't look right and is not my original vision. 

I'm frustrated. I don't want to rip this out again. But I'm not happy. This has been weighing on me for the past few days now.

And then I went and read Josiah's blog post for today (no, I'm not the Renee he's referring to). Something that stuck with me: Be willing to have something go wrong; it isn't a failure if you've learned something. It goes along with the idea that if a project fails or, in my case, isn't working out the way you envisioned, you can go back and have a "do over" of sorts. Now, this isn't always the case but with knitting and knitting design, you can go back and fix things that aren't working.

Oh, and then something else popped into my head from Big Hero 6: SHAKE THINGS UP!

What did this all make me realize? Maybe this pattern just doesn't want to be socks. Maybe it wants to be fingerless mitts or a cowl or an infinity scarf or........

In other words, I'm going to shake things up. I'm going to look into other options. I might even swatch.

So, thank you to Josiah for that post because it was just what I needed to hear this morning.