A few years ago I started a second fish-based afghan. It got put aside as baby blankets were knitted for nieces and nephews and then big ones for siblings with more definite deadlines, etc.

I picked it up one time in there but put it back away without adding a stitch.

I picked it up again today just to study the thing a bit and decide what to do. I untangled all those strands, trying to get started.

I had lost my sketches long since and told Richard, I don’t even know what this red blob was supposed to be turning into and I have no idea what to do with it.

(I had had a photo of a coral reef and I was trying a little too hard to replicate it rather than use it as a jumping-off point.)

But, I told him, it does have a big seed stitch border and I love how it looks and hate knitting it and am glad that that much of it is already done!

He went straight to the point: Rip it out. Rip it right down to that bottom border and start over with something you know you like.

I was a little bit stunned. All that work.

He was right.

But…he was also partly wrong. I like this side. I just don’t like the third of it on the right. And that’s the real reason why it’s just sat there.

I told him, Let me think about it for a day.

Sounded reasonable to him.

And then, while doing laundry, it suddenly hit me what the red blob was and where it had been going and how to take it from there. Finally, I could picture it! But if I do? I was trying to squeeze too much detail visually into too few stitches and it will never please me.

I know that if Gracie Larsen were still here she would be telling me how to carefully cut out the intarsia section I don’t want and to knit back up again from there, connecting back in at the sides as I go, even keeping the side seed stitch panels. I could do that.

But do I want to bother with all that. With all those strands on the left, plus whatever I add on the right, when I don’t even know yet what I would replace it with.

Let me think about it for the night.

(Edited to add, after counting: it’s only 26 rows of stockinette so far. He’s probably right.)