Ripping back before moving forward.

"I don't know what's happening to me. I seemed to be unraveling."   ~ Clarissa Vaughan, The Hours

Do you ever have a project that seemed so cool and interesting at first and you poured a lot of thought and energy into it but then, for some reason, it lost its luster and began a life of obscurity in the farthest corner of your UFO drawer?  

And just the knowledge that it's there bugs you because you had such high hopes for it in the beginning and you know the yarn still has great potential if it only had been made into something entirely different?

Well, I actually have several of those projects, but the one that has been on my mind the most lately is my knee high Nutkins that I blogged about way back when.  Even then I was having second thoughts about them!  After that post, I tucked them away in a little box that sits on the shelf.  The little box also holds random things like spare keys, packs of gum, and semi-important receipts. (Don't ask me why I decided to stash this UFO there...I have no idea.)  I lost my notes on these socks a long time ago and it would take so much work now to rip back and remember how many stitches I cast on and how many I rows I did before I increased, etc. in order to begin again and make its mate.

Every time I have to dig into that box, I see the lone unfinished Nutkin and I pet it and sigh.  But today, when I was dashing out the door to have lunch with a friend, I decided to grab the sock and skein and take it with me.  

Maybe I needed some color in my day?  Possibly.  Or maybe I thought I would have time to finally, after all these months, work on it?  Not likely.  (It's probably best not to try to psychoanalyze the fact that I took a skein of yarn with me for company. Let's just leave it at that.)

I think that I knew in the back of my brain that its time as a UFO was getting short.  That I had subconsciously made a decision that something finally had to be done with it.  And that something was to rip it back to nothing and begin again.

Because if I had continued to let it hide in the junk box, it would have kept nagging at my brain to do something with it.  And I have enough of those little things nagging at my brain right now and I guess today I unknowingly made moves toward the decision of frogging it and starting fresh.

And it felt delicious to hook up the loose end to the ball winder and just crank the handle.  I saw hours of  work slipping away, but I also got excited at the prospect of having a nice full cake of yarn again, ready and full of promise for whatever comes its way.  Which will more than likely be another sock, and maybe even the same pattern, but I just needed it to be a fresh start.

Halfway through...second thoughts? Nah.

Ahhhhh, feel it?  It's a sense of possibility...a very crimpy sense of possibility, but possibility nonetheless...

"I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then."   ~ Clarissa Vaughan, The Hours