On Self-Doubt

I hesitated to share this here today because who doesn't prefer light-hearted knitting photos (raises hand)? But this is real life, so here it is. I had a real struggle with self-doubt this weekend. Self-doubt is the worst kind of doubt because as much as you push it aside, it creeps in, whispers what you're not good at, and keeps at the whispering until you start to buy in too. 

I know I've alluded to a large design related project I've been working on lately. Well, it's coming to a rapid close. And yet here I am, at the eleventh hour ripping out button bands and deconstructing a sweater I paid a sample knitter to knit because I am so overwhelmed with this project/my job/being a mom/simply not feeding my family cereal every night. Not because there was an error. Oh no. I've had the pleasure of working with some amazing sample knitters recently. They've asked questions, checked numbers, ripped and reknit when needed and turned out full size men's sweaters in less than 4 weeks. Amazing. No. I'm ripping and deconstructing because at the second photo shoot for this project, the model tried on the sweater and oh.my.god. it looked awful. Not like bad knitting awful, like I couldn't put my finger on just why it looked so ugly. 

Those buttons were attached to that pile of yarn about 10 minutes prior. 

After talking with the photographer about why it was so ugly I decided there were a couple of problems. The buttons didn't look quite right with the overall vision of the sweater, and there were also too many and they were too small. This meant button bands needed to be reworked. That's not too big of a problem in the overall picture. I also decided that the sleeve cap didn't fit quite right into the armhole and it was too tight near the cuff, so you know what that means, rip rip rip. 

This used to be a sleeve.

After the final decisions (the shoulders just sucked) I said if worst came to worst it would need to be a different color. But hopefully that's not the case. 

So I spent yesterday asking why on Earth I thought I could manage taking on a huge project like this?! Who did I think I was? Will all my other projects fail now? I can't design this kind of sweater (even though I have), I'm just not good enough yet. I'm going to fail at this project. I countered by telling myself I had to trust the process (what all graduate students need to tell themselves so, you know, I know all about that) and that I absolutely could do this. I knew it would be hard. So here's the hard. 

And it sucked. I'm mostly a pretty confident person. But from time to time, the self-doubt pops up and I buy in. I let myself kind of wallow in it yesterday. I called my mom who had a great answer to each of those "why did I think I could do this" questions. And then today I got to it. I have washed the yarn, and will reskein in the morning. I've pulled out my designing resources and reworked the sleeve cap shaping. And tomorrow I'll get back to knitting.

By the way - the winner of the giveaway is comment #2.

Congratulations! I've contacted the winner via Ravelry so check your inboxes!

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On the Weather

I've lived in Ohio now for the better part of seven years and while I tend to still find the snow and winter highly magical, February gets me every time. February in California is spring time. Flower blossoms, warm breezes, and driving with the top down. Here we are knee deep (quite literally) in snow and ice and pretty much the coldest part of the winter. It's hard to believe that we will ever be warm again. 

Being cooped up inside, I've been working on a two-color brioche cowl (free pattern from the Purl Bee) that was for a class I taught at my LYS. While I had planned to get the cowl done by the end of the class, I've been having some fairly severe hand pain that kept me from knitting a few weeks ago. So now I'm back at it and about halfway done. 

Being cooped up also means toddler problems. I happen to have a pretty active 2 year-old who has the energy of 10 men most days and this weather is not really conducive to going outside. We did venture out this morning for about 10 minutes before the wind was too much (that was also before the wind was -8, it was still a balmy 27 with a windchill of 17 then). The fresh air helps, but I notice tantrums flare up immensely on days like this. 

We made a trip to Target tonight for some much needed supplies (I wish everyone could have seen my cart stuck in the snow while I tried to get back to my car!) and picked up some craft supplies. D enjoyed painting after dinner and moved from using the brush to using a dinosaur to paint tracks. 

Ideas on keeping your toddler engaged during house-bound times? We've done indoor basketball, indoor slides, we have a huge sensory pool inside right now filled with plastic balls (yes, like Chuck E Cheese), we do snow sensory tables, painting, play dough. Nothing is quite enough for a full weekend when what we really need is some sunshine and fresh air. 

May Happenings

Last month flew by far to quickly. I've been doing a TON of knitting but only a little that I can share right now. It's unfortunate that you'll have to wait because I'm SO excited about this new design!

 

In addition to all the crazy deadline knitting that's been going on, D is about to be 9 months old! I'm trying to hang on to every second of this little guy's first year but boy is it going fast.

 

 

The older he gets, the more like Adam he looks. Which is fine, except that I did all the hard work! I keep teasing Adam that I grew D from scratch. No easy feat I tell you.

 

Now that the weather is warming up, we're back to our weekend walks on the Ohio towpath. D loves to ride in his stroller which makes taking him out super easy and enjoyable. The worst part is that we have to load up the dogs, stroller, baby, and ourselves into tiny cars.

 

 

And, just to make the summer weather offical, the peonies in my yard bloomed!