The Knitting Diaries: the scarfed tucked coat

This came in the mail yesterday. It's the yarn I ordered from Elann that I posted about the other day. With it came the instructions, as promised, for the coat, which was designed by Helen Hamman. They're calling it "scarfed tucked coat" --lower-case and since Helen Hamman's logo is also lower case, I'm presuming that this is a typographical choice and the name of the garment is actually, The Scarfed Tucked Coat. But it may be that that's just Hamman's or elann's way of differentiating this particular coat from the unscarfed tucked one. Or the scarfed straight-line coat. (Now the letters are starting to shimmer and blur in front of me, and I'm wondering if scarfed is actually a word. And what it would mean to be scar fed, as in eating a new brand of--blech! stop it!)

I was most eager to see the instructions for knitting the coat. I know it will be a challenge. Just to take on a project of this size--a coat, for chrissake!--is major. But it never occured to me that I might not be up to it. And then I looked at the pattern: two pages, 8 pt. type, a schematic that is clear, but that reveals the truth of what the explanatory blurb said: "This unique, asymmetrical coat features right front pleats and a long scarf, which drapes dramatically over the left shoulder. It is worked from side to side, with its body shaped by short rows."

Oy. In an instant I went from excitement to fear, from certainty of success to sure failure. In my mind's eye, I saw myself happily knitting the gauge swatch and then I saw myself shoving it and whatever else I'd completed on the coat into the back of my closet (with the other failed projects). That quick. Soup to Nuts--joy-excitement-interest-terror-failure-denial.

It seems to me that I may be on to some signal piece of self-knowledge here. If I can catch what I'm feeling and doing as I do it, it will be a way of isolating my process so that I can understand what happens when I get scared. And maybe alter the process mid-stream so that it doesn't end up in failure. So I'm going to do a diary of making this coat. Not posting about it every day, but when there is actually something to say. Maybe you all will help me figure myself out....