When to Give Up On a Pattern – 1 Reason is All you Need

Picture this.

You are spending some time relaxing in the evening after a long day and watching one of your favorite crafter podcasters on YouTube. Their projects are stunningly beautiful, but there is one featured shawl that you just can’t stop thinking about when the video is over. You think, “This shawl could be my next project!” and down the internet rabbit hole you go.

First stop, Ravelry. Gotta look at this pattern, check the attributes list, difficulty rating, and most importantly – the suggested needles or hook size and amount of yarn you’d need. You’ve got the correct needles! Yay! But why stop there? Might as well go ahead and purchase the pattern so that you’re ready to go when the right day arrives.

Yarn shopping is next. I do this a lot – online window shopping. You tell yourself, “I’m only looking at this to see how much it would cost and decide on colors.” Oh, the possibilities! I don’t know about you, but I could spend an entire day playing with color palettes in my cart on KnitPicks.com. And alas, you’ve found THE perfect yarn in THE perfect color. Oh, and it’s on sale for today only. What timing! How are you going to stop yourself now?

You don’t. You order the yarn. It’s too glorious not to. You adore it and can’t wait to get started. There’s a certain aching in us crafters about wanting to get the needles working and the yarn flowing through our hands.

The anticipation is killing you now. You check your email the following day and see that your yarn is being prepared for shipping. Wow, KnitPicks is quick! Your yarn is set to arrive within the next week and after counting down the days, you can hardly contain yourself once the box finally lands on your doorstep.

You tear into the box and the spectacular world of fiber engulfs your senses. No time to waste! Screw the rest of your current WIPs. You’re getting started on this shawl right this second! You print your pattern, grab your supplies, and sit down in your favorite spot and get started on this bad boy.

The first few rows are super easy. You think, “Jeez, anyone could make this shawl!” You take pictures, make a project page on Ravelry, and tell your community about your sweet new WIP on Instagram. And then it happens. The dreaded chart. The brioche. The extensive instructions that your brain has a hard time unfurling. No big deal. You tell yourself, “That’s fine. I can do hard things.” So you pull yourself up and keep on going.

You get stuck. You research the techniques. Your stitch count is off. You just learned about placing lifelines in your work, but that would’ve been nice to know like 10 rows back before things got this messy. What to do? You decide that the only thing to do is rip the whole thing out and begin again.

You try again, and the same thing happens. Ugh. Frustration ensues. Even after placing a lifeline this time, things are still not going well. You end up ripping back to the lifeline too many times to count, so you start all over once more.

Attempt #3 – You’re on the brink of ripping your hair out along with the shawl that you just can’t seem to figure out. That simple and easy WIP sitting in the basket beside you suddenly looks a lot more enjoyable after dealing with this whole complicated ordeal. You question all of your life choices up until this moment.

Where do you go from here? Do you keep trying and hope that a moment will come that your brain will finally compute this pattern? Or, do you simply give up and move on with your life?

I have come to this point with more patterns than I can shake a stick at. I don’t think this exact scenario is a rarity. I’d be willing to bet that more people struggle with this. They might just not talk about it too much. Sometimes it bothers me to think about spending money on a pattern only to never use it or not like it after I get started. After all, that’s one of the reasons that I no longer buy patterns. But, I digress.

Sometimes it’s good to stick with something until you figure it out, but that is all dependent on internal motivation. If it’s important to you to figure out how to do a new technique, you will find a way. Look up YouTube tutorials. YouTube is a gold mine for learning how to do anything you can imagine. You can also find local, in person help from a knitting group or local yarn store in your area. There are a ton of people out there willing to help you get across the bridge from struggle to success.

What about when you’re wanting to knit a particular thing, but every time you sit down to work on it, you feel stressed and frustrated? Have you ever found yourself in this spot?

Is it ok to just give up? Yes. Yes, it is. Actually, I encourage you to give up if the thing you’re knitting isn’t making you feel happy and peaceful.

Life is too short for anything less than happy crafting.

You only need 1 reason to quit a pattern. There’s only 1 box to check.

If it’s not a joy, give yourself permission to move on to the projects that you know you love. This does take some trial and error, but in time you will find what kinds of projects you enjoy the most and they will become your go-tos.