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Knitting fails: getting over the slump

Knitting fails: getting over the slump - GamerCrafting

Oops, I did it again – I got 3/4 through a sweater before I decided that I don’t like it.

On Sunday (yes, on Easter), I tried on my After the Rain sweater, having bound off the body and finished the neckline trim.

I stood in the bathroom, stared at myself in the mirror, and decided that I hated it. Weeks of endless stocking stitch and striping, rescuing dropped stitches (read more about that here), and a bunch of yarn, all amounting to nothing. I spent the rest of the day in a funk, loudly complaining to anyone who would listen that “I’m probably just a terrible knitter anyway.”

Reality check: I’m not a terrible knitter, and there’s not necessarily anything wrong with the pattern, or my tension, or the fiber. Sometimes, the best laid plans can yield some seriously heartbreaking results. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work out the way you wanted it to.

And that’s okay. 

It’s hard to cut yourself some slack. Those of us who are perfectionists (cough cough) have a tendency to have the following thought process:

“I am not immediately perfect at this activity, therefore I am a terrible person and everything I touch dies.” 

Stop. Stop it, all of you. It’s okay to decide that it’s not what you were hoping for. It’s okay to rip it all out while you cry in the corner with a glass of wine. It’s okay to hide it in the cabinet for 6 months until you can bear to look at it again. 
As for me, I’ll be ripping out the neck trim and the bottom ribbing to redo them. 
…in 6 months. 

What are your knitting fails, fellow crafters? Tell me in the comments!


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2 thoughts on “Knitting fails: getting over the slump

  1. After a long haul flight, I worked on a complex lace shawl with jetlag… in my cnofused state I missed 4 rows of the lace pattern, and instead of putting it aside to pull back to the mistake when I was rested, I ended up frogging the entire project!

  2. Oh no! Lace is the most frustrating thing to try and work back on, in my opinion – I'd probably have frogged it too (and then had a big glass of wine).

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