That Eureka Moment

I think I know how Archimedes felt when sitting in his bath he realised that a body immersed in water displaces its own volume of water from the container in which it is placed.

For me, my 'Eureka Moment' came this afternoon when I realised that the latest version of my sock design was actually producing the effect that I wanted. After a number of false starts, I had finally got the stitch pattern right so that I was able to produce something that resembled a club such as those found on a playing card.

I know that I still have more designs to create, but the club symbol was always going to be the most difficult to produce for my planned series of patterns. This means that I can now press ahead as fast as my fingers, and mood, will allow me. I shall make one sock of each pattern as quickly as possible and write up the patterns complete with their charts so I have them all ready to submit. I'm going to ask if it is necessary to submit a pair of each design so as to allow me as much time as possible for the lace scarf design.

Despondency had started to take over last night when I realised that the design that I had hoped would look okay, in fact did not and needed to be redrafted. Mr Smiley often used to tell me that I should persevere when I found things difficult to do because of depression. And that is what I have done over the last few days; I have persevered and kept working at it until I had achieved what I wanted.

The sock will take a couple more days to complete, but knowing that the most difficult design has been nailed means that I can knit with renewed vigour. After this design the others will seem pretty simple and take only a few minutes to draft onto the graph paper. And they will actually be easier to knit too.

I didn't shout 'Eureka', but I did think it. Oh yes, Archimedes, I have an idea of how you must have felt at that moment.