Fix or Rip?

This week my dilema was, should I fix it or rip it out and start over? Below are pictures of my current knitting project - a textured turtleneck pattern out of the current Vogue magazine. It's a beautiful pattern. The yarn is fabulous. My current style of knitting, taking great liberties when errors occur, does not work when the texture is the primary part of the pattern and the yarn shows each and every error. With the help of my knitting friends at our Monday Night Knitting group, I learned how to fix entire sections of my knitting. Below is a picture of the "oh no" stage.  The "oh no" stage focus on the doubt that you can put it all back together again. Feels like Humpty Dumpty just fell off the wall.

Ripped out / Ready to Fix

Fixed

Through several iterations, I was able to do the reconstruction. The process was very tedious and required all of my focus. After I got into a rhythm, I found myself actually enjoying the process. It required total usage of my brain and helped me learn more about the dynamics of each type of knitting stitch.

So, what is it about this silliness that makes me want to write a public document professing the fact that a pattern and yarn pointed out to me that I am less than a perfectionist? I gained insight into something my boss said to me long ago. I'm more likely to walk away from the problem, fix it by using a workaround and get out!  His point was that I need to learn how to dig into the issue and figure out why it occurred.

I spent four nights figuring out why the errors occurred on this project, and how to keep them from happening again.  -

I can't say that I enjoyed the exprerience, but what I did enjoy was looking at the project after I was done and realizing that I was no longer afraid of making mistakes because I knew how to fix them.  I'm sure there's more to the lesson that I will still uncover, but for now, I'm glad I know how to fix things.