Forward, Brave Froggers

The Pirate originally was doggedly knitting away on a 36-stitch garter stitch scarf, but after knitting nearly two inches of woolly goodness, he got very frustrated with the number of mistakes he was making.

Lesser Mortals would have decided to give up (the Vampire, for instance, did exactly that a few years back), but although the Pirate decided to frog the entire project, he did not do this with Giving Up in mind. No, the Pirate is made of sterner stuff. He merely frogged the project in order to start over, his goal being that of perfecting his product and his design - he had decided on a slightly narrower and longer scarf.

He has improved, in a few short days, both in speed and in decreasing his number of errors, so that in two days he has knit past the point of frogged yarn and is now knitting up entirely virgin yarn. Woohoo!

Now, I know that you would like to see a pic of his progress, and I promise to encourage him to offer up examples as he goes along. But he still is at that beginning stage in which much of his time is spent in frustration with his own inability to live up to his perfectionistic standards, and he doesn't feel that a two-inch-long sample is something worth bragging about. I would argue the point, but I've known the Pirate for long enough to recognize when he's set his booted heels into the ground... he's not going to budge on this one. We'll have to wait for a while.

On the bright side, while he is still unnecessarily harsh on himself as a student knitter, the Pirate *has* volunteered that he has caught brief flashing glimpses of what we knitters see in the process: "I can sort of see that Zen thing you talk about..."

I think that's Progress, don't you?