The Sweet Smell of Success

If your family was like mine, you heard this platitude a thousand times -- "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Or maybe this one -- "anything worth having is worth working for." And definitely this one -- "Rome wasn't built in a day." And somewhere along the line, someone probably told you the story of how many thousands of times Edison failed while working on the lightbulb. And then there's that Dyson vacuum cleaner guy who says on his commercial how many hundreds of models of his product he went through to get it right. The lesson we are supposed to get from this is that failure is just a happy an opportunity to create something better. I get it. But I'm pretty sure that none of these folks were knitters. That might not have been so quick to dismiss "failure" if they were frogging, frogging, frogging. Arghh.

I love knitting. I love creating original designs. I love reading knitting magazines and books. I could spend hours in a yarn shop just appreciating the merchandise. I have yarn in my veins. But holy cannoli do I hate it when I knit something that isn't EXACTLY what I pictured in my head and it gets frogged or felted into coasters. So when I did my first version of my magnolia blossom for the Mississippi Magnolia Tea Cozy, I was, well let's just say disappointed, when it came out of the washing machine almost as big as my head. My husband was home at the time and I think I used some language he hasn't heard since he was in the Army.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with a magnolia blossom almost the size of my head. Real magnoloia blossoms can be very large, depending on the specific type. Not quite as large as my head, though. So "waste not want not." (I hear my Mom with that one!) It's a heckuvalot of short row shaping and at 125 yards of wool on size 7 needles, and fair amount of knitting. I can't felt it into coaters since it already felted into shape. Hmmm, dog hat? It would work, but I never put my dogs in clothing. My niece suggested putting it on a choker, but that would only work if I had a neck like a giraffe. A pin? Would probably make me walk crooked from upsetting my center of gravity. I'm sure I'll think of something.....

So it was back to the drawing board for my magnolia blossoms. It's kind of a crap shoot when you're going to felt something with that much shaping to estimate the starting size, so I tried not to think about the fact it was 50/50 whether I'd be starting over from scratch a third time. So I re-worked the pattern, made changes to the construction technique, knitted a new one and tossed it in the washer. The 30 minutes it spent in the washer felt like 30 hours. I held my breath, opened the washer, dug through the towels I had thrown in for extra friction, and out came the perfect felted magnolia blossom. Ah, success. Of course the sweet smell of success in this case smells like wet sheep, but it's a sweet smell nonetheless.

Here they are side by side:

Projects from our Deep South designers are starting to come in to the office. It's almost like Christmas when I open the packages. And you know how I like Christmas! As soon as we open them, we put them on the dress forms and start making decisions on styling and which model will look best in the garments. It's like playing dress-up, but with life sized Barbie dolls that drink coffee with you.

We're also working on our book layout this week, choosing design elements and colors. Erin is doing the technical design piece and we are having a blast creating the look and feel of the book. It's astonishing what technology has made possible with the right software. The options are nearly endless. It's really magical to watch the book actually come to life on a computer monitor. Almost as magical as watching a garment take shape from string and 2 sticks. Hmmm, I think I'll do a little magic today as I knit up the last couple of magnolia blossoms.