Frozen.

I have a confession to make.  I am a procrastinator.  I’ve said it, I’ve owned the truth of the statement.  You need further evidence?  I had the idea for this post last week, I started this post Wednesday.  Today is Sunday. 

This is my friend Wade’s sweater:

In exchange for this sweater, he built me a pair of chinks.  Wade and I collaborated on the design of this sweater in June of 2011.  In August, Wade sent me the chaps he’d built, for me.  I finally purchased the perfect yarn for the project that Fall.  I had several other projects on the needles at the time, so I didn’t begin knitting the sweater until the Winter of 2012. 

The sweater has spent the last few weeks dominating the seat of my couch.  My theory being, that if a project is in plain sight and you have to live around it, perhaps it will be completed more quickly.  Despite staring the sweater in the face daily, I froze with inaction. 

The sweater represents hours of my life, early Winter evenings and quiet hours at camp, taking physical shape as carefully crafted knits and purls, forming collar and cuffs.  The rope applique pictured, the final detail, was all that stood between me and completion.  The rope detail and fear.  Fear of failure.  Fear that the finished project will not measure up to the image in my mind, restrained my hand.

I have immense passion for creating, I can visualize projects in their completion, and find myself impulsively starting new things .   Despite my initial enthusiasm,  I struggle with completing my schemes.  I call it procrastination, but it is not laziness. 

Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”  Failure is not fatal.  Phew.  I relearn this lesson, every time I create.  Failure is not fatal.     I mailed this woolen delight to Wyoming and breathed a sigh of relief.  Done.  It is time to begin again.