MS 3:Realist vs. Loser

So here I sit on Sunday Morning, watching the Gentleman's Final from Wimbledon and I am having a mini crisis of character. About three weeks ago, I joined the bandwagon that is Mystery Stole 3. I bought my first lace weight yarn, ever, I bought my beads, I spent a couple of weeks swatching and anxiously waited for the first clue to come out. I was a little concerned about my abilities as a knitter. I haven't ever done anything this delicate, I am not a very advanced knitter but I'm willing to give it a shot. A week ago Friday,the first clue came out, I looked at it, I started it and I quickly learned that even though these are only knit, purl, yarn overs, knit 2 together's and slip, knit, pass slip stitch over's, all of which I am very capable of doing, the placement of each one of these in relation to the other was going to be a challenge for me. I didn't really have any trouble reading the chart. Following the chart was a different matter. So, I took some of the advice from the experienced lace knitters on the MS3 Yahoo! group and color coded the / and \ so I knew which symbol was which stitch. I covered up the chart except for the row I was working on and I counted and counted and counted. I also started, tinked, reknit, frogged, started again, counted, tinked back 4 rows, frogged, started again, etcetera, etcetera. I felt that I could rise to the challenge of this and continued to work through each row. I even figured out how to put in a "lifeline" so that I could rip back without fear of losing any stitches and easily get the piece back on the needles. I am here to tell you, if I really had to stake my life on these lifelines, I'd be dead by now. After 10 days of knitting and counting and marking lines on my chart with highlighters and check marks....

(Photo removed at designer's request.)

This is where my Mystery Stole stands today.

(I know it's hard to tell but there are three different attempts in this blob of silk and wool.)

So, now I am faced with this crisis of character. I DO NOT want to keep doing this. Seriously, I have restarted this thing 10, yes 10 times. I have restarted it 3 times in the last 8 hours. Yesterday, I spent about 6 hours on it and by the time I gave up, I had knit 8 fewer rows than when I had started in the morning on the same piece. Here's my question, am I a loser for "giving up" and not digging deep and muddling through, or am I a realist for saying, this is beyond my current capabilities and clearly I am not in the right place in my head to keep doing this over and over and over? There is no joy in this and why would I spend my "leisure" time doing something that only frustrates me.

I watch Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal and think, what if they had given up when they couldn't get their serve just right or lost 6 or 7 matches in a row? What if they had allowed themselves to be defeated by a little bit of silk, wool, a couple of sticks and some /\ & O's?