There are not many things worse than labouring long into the night over a complicated new pattern and realising it will never work. For whatever reason:

1: You missed out an entire section and it has no arms.

2: You’ve tugged it over his hips as hard as you can and it isn’t budging. (Do not fall into the trap of telling yourself that blocking will instantly add several inches round the waist. It won’t. Especially when you’ve been using acrylic not wool. That little episode of mine caused some merriment at the knit group, I can tell you.)

3: You simply cannot face even one more attempt at that hideously complicated quadruple bobble stitch – or the voice of that Youtube lady who has been trying to help you, on a loop, for the last 40 minutes.

Well here’s the thing. It is a phrase my co knitters use a lot. Knitting is supposed to be fun and when it is not, stop. Start unravelling (literally) those weeks of work and end up a sobbing broken mess surrounded by a wall of tangled up wool? NO! I have yet to fail at a project and not find another use for it. Here is my latest failure/success:

(I take heart from the fact that esteemed Knitter to the Gods, Lucy, who methodically and neatly produces exquisite items mainly from the “do not attempt unless you are a supreme expert” rated patterns, also put this aside half way.)

This is the pattern. Disclaimer: Many have succeeded where I have failed and there is nothing wrong with it. It is a very well written and lovely thing. This is one of several charts:

If you can read these things you’ll see that is one hell of a lot of stranding and since I had already re done the body after realising I had missed the chart for the front of the whale entirely – I found it didn’t fit Albie anyway.

So, as I often do, I turned it into a cushion! Not only is it useful, but you can’t outgrow a cushion.

There are lots of other times I’ve given up when the end didn’t justify the means (wasn’t having fun). My worst habit is making something much smaller than it’s meant to be and hopig no one will notice. I regret this and know now that the best thing is to leave it aside for as long as it takes to care about it once again.

A good example is this shawl. I crocheted in literally hundreds of miniature glass beds and bled from the brain over its complexity.

Gave up, wrapped it and told the recipient their Xmas present was in fact, a scarf.

Everyone’s happy. (Don’t look too closely at that picture. Some of the holes are not actually part of the pattern.)