If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know I occasionally talk about an Apiary Puff Quilt (crochet) or a Beehive Quilt (knit) I’m working on. Both use something referred to as hexapuffs, or six-sided yarn created puffs stuffed with acrylic filling to give it a three-D look. It’s become my go-to pattern to use up scrap yarn and as a portable project to toss in my purse and take along. I’ve started and stopped working on it for longer than I care to think. And I finally figured out why.
I liked the size of the hexapuffs that I knit, but getting them cast on was a pain. Also, they had a tendency to slip off the needles when I was traveling from place to place. The crochet hexapuffs turned out to be much more portable without unintentional unraveling, but I didn’t like the larger size compared to the knitted ones. Last weekend I looked at both patterns and did the math to convert the crochet ones the size of the knitted hexapuffs.
Bingo! I was very pleased with the first one I made and just as pleased with the other four I have. So from now on, I will make the modified version.
What will I do with the one hundred plus larger knit and crochet hexapuffs I’ve made over the last few years? I may unravel them and salvage the stuffing to remake them into the smaller versions. Or they may become cat toys. I haven’t decided yet.
Why am I telling you this?
Because the same thing can happen when. I will get close to an ending and make a choice. I should like the events of the ending. It’s what makes sense. Then someone will point out something and I’ll realize it happens at the wrong time, or it involves the wrong character. I’ll sense something is wrong, but it takes another person to get me thinking about the best way to correct it.* Then I can start reworking the story until I am happy with it.
And it’s not wasted words. Some of them I might rewrite and integrate into the story or save for another project. Others will never be seen by anyone. But it’s all needed for me to figure out what wasn’t making me happy, and how to fix it.
*One quick aside. A great piece of writing advice I was given is that if someone tells you the only way to correct a problem, they are usually wrong. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem, but that you are the person who can come up with the best way to fix it.