On tangles and a fresh start

I've been having some knitting troubles for the past six or nine months. I was working on this one big project, a cardigan. I had such beautiful yarn and I was really loving it. Then on Ravelry I saw some adaptions of my pattern that I liked better. So I tried to add sleeves and change the decreases. It just kept getting worse. I ripped parts of it out and started over. I did this two or three times. Finally I gave up. I'm not ready to mess around with pattern adaptions, at least not yet. I started to frog the whole thing and the yarn got tangled and I couldn't even finish the dissolution of my project. 

I stopped knitting for a while. I was pretty discouraged. 

Lately I've been missing it, so I've started again. I tried to finish a second sock, that I had started a while ago, but then I realized I just needed a fresh project, a brand new start. So it's a sock but the first one and with new-ish yarn from the stash basket. I'm feeling ok about it, glad to be knitting again, hopeful about overcoming my mistakes and confusion this time. I have to remind myself that I've only been knitting for three or four years, and I still have a lot to learn. Everything helps though, even the disasters teach me.

For books,  I read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman over Spring Break. It came out a few years back but it's a super interesting and sad story about cultural misunderstandings and medicine and lack of communication. I think things in the medical culture are better now, at least I hope so. 

The other book is Circle of Simplicity by Cecile Andrews. Simplicity as a topic comes up a lot in my Quaker world, and this book is great for sparking discussion about how a simple life is not about giving up things but about gaining community and purpose and greater connections, both spiritually and in the natural world. 

Linking up with Ginny for Yarn Along.