Knitting news: Where in I admit that I am not cut out to design anything

I'm making my daily pilgrimage through the knitting blogs I hold near and dear. The Yarn Harlot, as usual, is making me nearly hysterical with laughter.

I've been knitting slowly on the Lovely Lady Oriel. It's much easier to knit the back when the front has already been finished. This time I didn't sweat the decreases because I'd already sweat them the first time. Mostly because I didn't know if I should do the yarn over here, this time, or forgo it. There was lots of to-ing and fro-ing on the number of stitches that should have been on the needle when I finished the decreases. I subtracted too many and then added too many back when I discovered that I hadn't really subtracted too many.

This time I missed by one stitch and decided to call it good. I've also decided that there are two kinds of lace knitters. Ones who can do math and therefore design knitting patterns, and those who lose the ability to add 2 + 2 when tired or distracted. Those are my people, and their idea of designing a knitting pattern is to make multicolored stripes in a stockinette scarf. Whoo Hoo! I'm a designing fool.

Same holds true for fair isle knitting. The math and spatial skills required to embody my dream knitting into a real life project escape me in a way that only be called complete and total. Between the number of stitches needed for the proper sizing, and the number of stitches needed to knit a repeating peerie or border I become lost like Hansel and Gretel with no bread crumbs.

It hurts me that I can't wrap my brain around it. It's like a giant mental blind spot. You've tricked yourself into finding your blindspot before right? I just can't hold the two numbers in my brain long enough to have a meaningful relationship develop between the two before the fog comes in. As soon as I've got the total number of cast on stitches in my head, I then try to divide by the number of stitches needed for each repeat. My brain just refuses to go there.

So I'm happily a pattern follower. Same with recipes. Sadly, I feel that makes me a complete washout in the creativity department. I turn out lovely, serviceable and some might say delicious things, but it's somebody else's lovely and delicious. My belly dancing is the same way. It wasn't always like that. I used to be able to improvise and make stuff up from out of my head. I wonder if that person is still in there waaaay down inside. Hiding.

But I'm not giving up. Us non-designer types must number in the millions. I'm betting there are way more of us than there is them.

Happily knitting away on someone else's glory... Till soon.