Keep Moving Forward

I'm learning that with knitting (and in some cases life as well) sometimes I just need to follow directions whether or not they make any sense at all. I can't tell you how many times I've read and re-read a section of a pattern trying to figure it out, and have just not been able to see where I'm going with it. I'll get to a point where I'll do one of two things: either throw down the project in exasperation and ignore it for months or just start blindly following the directions, hoping for the best. The funny thing is that when I go with the latter, nine times out of ten it'll be exactly right and actually make sense once it's on the needles.

Case in point is the edging for In The Pink, the spiral shawl that I was working on in spring. My goal was to have it finished in time to wear to my girlfriend's Tahoe wedding in June but clearly that did not happen. Mid May I hit that border edge, didn't totally understand what I was to do, and put it down in frustration.

Just last week I finally picked it up again. I read through the directions a couple of times and still couldn't picture it but thought, "What the heck, I'll give it a shot." Lo and behold, it actually started to make some sense! I hadn't realized that the edging would be worked perpendicular to the body of the shawl until I actually gave it a shot:



It's amazing that time and time again if I just take a "Keep Moving Forward" stance on knitting I will have success. It's not like this is a new lesson for me, yet I still have to remind myself of this fact every time I hit a wall.

"Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney