One of the things I love about knitting is the numerous opportunities to learn life lessons from the craft. The importance of patience, being willing to go back and fix mistakes (or even start over), and - more recently - learning when I've just tried to hard.
Awhile ago I posted about my endeavors with the unfortunate combination of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock Wool and the Embossed Leaves sock pattern. Each component, in itself, is lovely. The colors of the yarn beckoned to me months ago, with their autumnal splendor. It seemed only right to play off those colors and work the yarn into a pattern that oozes leafy goodness. In the manner of many a denial-ridden knitter, I made an entire sock, did the finishing, and even let it have a time out before finally admitting that it was a bad job. The colors, which looked so lovely in the skein and wound into a ball, had pooled, puddled and leaked into each other, making the sock mostly red on one side, and mostly yellow on the other - each with yucky bits of green intermixed. The lacy-goodness of the embossed leaf pattern was utterly unrecognizable in the face of the psychedelic color puddles, making the time spent working on a lace sock completely irrelevant. See?
The thing is, the yarn didn't need anything to make it more of what it was (beautiful), nor did the pattern. Each deserves a simple counterpart, one that says "Hey, check us out", rather than "clash, clash, clash I'm pretty! No, I am! Stoppit! I'm the prettiest! clash, clash, clash". I had no choice, in the face of such unfortunate results, but to admit that I had tried too hard. I decided to try a completely different tactic, so I started a nice, plain sock. Check it out:
Prettiness!
Note to self: When it isn't working out, no matter how much harder I try, I must remember to change my approach...
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