Slowly Falling in Love

I've started this project twice before. And both previous tries were failures.
I got too picky. I let my perfectionism get the best of me. And I abandoned them.

This time, though, none of that had a chance to set in.
I told myself that it's going to be this way, that it will NOT be perfect. Things will NOT look 100% as it's coming together.
And that HAS to be okay.

This all started two years ago, when, thanks to the lovely Lucy at Attic24, I fell in love with the idea of a beautifully colored afghan. It would be wild and bright and lovely.
So I started. In a ripple pattern (Lucy's ripple pattern, actually). At the time, I was going through a lot of pain in my knees, and sitting was only sort of bearable, but I powered through as often as I could manage. Then I set it aside for a bit, came back to it and said "oh gosh that's horrible. It's unevenly striped and the colors don't match and I hate it."
So it came undone.

Then, later in that same year, I started another afghan with that in mind. Colors! All of the colors (let's be honest, my soul yearns for colors). And I had the brilliant idea to work on an afghan shaped like a star! It was going to be fantastic!
And then I got to where I couldn't complete the color coordination the way I pleased without spending way too much money, and so I set it aside. And again, hated it.

This time, I was prepared for that.

I knew it was going to look silly while it was working up.
I knew that I will not work on it every day - if something takes more than a few days to finish, I almost always abandon it entirely.
I knew that there would be times I may hate it.

And all that has to be okay.

Because the end result was going to be beautiful.

I found this 12-pointed star pattern (this is a Ravelry link, which I believe will require a registration to view the pattern - but its a great resource for crochet and knitting!), pulled out all of my cotton yarn (which I had amassed a great deal of!) and got going.

These pictures are from two days in. I already wanted to rip it out, because of the GIANT blue center I managed to give it. But I told myself that I can't. I will learn to love it, I just had to wait.

...am I the only one who talks themselves through craft projects?

I've worked on it off and on since the 13th of December, and I love watching it grow.

These three pictures are from this past Monday (the 29th of December) - the sun was out so bright, I couldn't pass up the chance to photograph it!

And even since then, it's grown. Monday it was 50 inches across. As of this morning, it's 56.5 inches.

And it's getting more beautiful every time I work on it.

It's getting difficult to take pictures of, as it's so big! And it's still got a long way to go.

There is no pattern to the colors, other than trying to use up all of my half-skeins without repeating a color right after itself. Now, I'm almost out of half-skeins, and have had to open new ones!

I cannot wait to show you when it's done.
I am in love with it. It's not going to match anything. Ever. And that is oddly exciting!

~Havok

P.S. It's this yarn, and its fabulous to work with.