So, there’s two ways to do it, he was saying: take twenty years while you carefully weigh every possible variation of every possible part or event or choice–or build fast go smash blow things up and learn and then go do it again.

Like Elon Musk on the latter? I asked.

Exactly. NASA vs SpaceX.

This from a man who’s quite proud of having been part of a software group that worked on the Mars Rovers, so I guess he does have some idea of what it’s like to work with NASA, actually. (You should have seen his excitement over that perfect landing. But I digress.)

He was thinking I’d Musked it, but, no, not at all. I explained that (while knitting lots of hats and a few cowls) I hadn’t just dithered over it these last three or four months–I’d drawn, redrawn, googled for images for inspiration, drawn some more, but I just couldn’t picture it in my mind; that brain function was lost to injury years ago.

I told him, I pulled out the–remember when I made that landscape of Alaska in a completely impractical baby blanket for Lillian, out of baby alpaca and silk, and then made it over again in washable wool? I still have the original. I looked at it again today and again worked out how I could riff on it.

I even dreamed the silly project a few nights ago and got some of that visualization down and it has stayed with me.

I had collected so much cashmere for it from Colourmart’s half-price sales (and had quite a few lace weights plied into the weight I wanted for an extra $5. The offerings are few this month but there are some.)

So I felt like I had NASA’d the thing to death. I had long had the bottom edge finished and waiting.

But what it came down to was, I was afraid of it. I was afraid after all this build-up of totally botching the thing. (Thinking of Carolyn’s tire swing that I embroidered lawn scuff marks under so it would not look like–yow and never mind and I was thrilled when one of her neighbors marveled in delight, Is that the tire swing?!)

It felt like a huge triumph today when, first the Alaska, then pulled out the latestest sketch, the yarn, then lined the balls up together, okay that no no that one okay and that and put that back that no that’s going to be sky not river that won’t go but that one…

…and at long last I committed to it and sat down and knitted that first row of color work. It felt like cutting into one’s first steek (man, could someone who writes Autocorrect go learn how to knit?) But it just didn’t have to be that hard. At all.

I’ve wanted to do a creekside and it has wanted to be a mountain landscape for all this time.

Mountains it is.

For the first inch, anyway, unless it decides otherwise–proving that my yarn is still the boss of me–but I think. I think. I’ve got it and I can take it from here.

(Let’s draw it in colors rather than purl stitches, and change those antlers) okay, where should I put the elk?