Five Steps Forward, Three Steps Back

Stitch and rip, stitch and rip.  How many miles have you ripped in your knitting career?  Mine would probably reach to London. 

It's painful to see your hard work lie there all unraveled, now a little crumpled, hopefully not tangled.  But unless you're willing to rip out mistakes, you'll never achieve knitting nirvana. 

Yes, it's possible to "fudge" a stitch count by throwing in an M1 or a K2tog (I must confess, I've done this more than once when working someone else's pattern), but the work still holds a flaw.  And now that I've decided to share some of my original designs, I'm determined to get it right for the reader. 

So it's five steps forward, three steps back.

The lacy bamboo Cleavage Cover-Up has already had seven reversals of fortune.  Creating an original is an informed hunch.  Sometimes that hunch pans out; often it doesn't.  So it's back to the last spot that "worked."  Seeing the pile of kinks on the couch beside me gives a little twinge, but I tell myself, "That's one more thing I've learned."  And I go forward with my revised plan.

Knitting an original is like living a life:  sometimes you just have to go backwards to get ahead.