Stuck in my head

I wrote poetry for quite a few years in high school and college, and I became quite familiar with the notion of writer's block.  In fact, I might say I'm intimately familiar with it, considering I haven't been able to write much of anything since then. =P

But I find a much more interesting block occurs for me with arts other than writing.  It's the inability to transcribe the complete piece of art into concrete pieces.  With writing, I just kind of run out of ideas, though I can still keep typing.  With music (especially arranging), painting/drawing, and now crochet, I find the idea is complete and perfect - but almost impossible to transcribe.

Take this sweater that I'm trying to crowbar out.  It's based on Iris Schreier's "Four Rectangle Sweater" from her book Lacy Little Knits.  It would involve a lacy Tunisian stitch that would mimic the rectangular form of the fabric that she uses, with slip stitches on the sides instead of knitted ribs, on a light, floaty yarn that would play well with layering.

Or the hazy mohair scarf that would make great use of the Lana Gatto yarn that I bought in Italy, worked on a large hook to make a soft, spacy fabric that could potentially double as an elegant stole over an evening dress.

Or the woodsy shawl using the bulky brown and green Louisa Harding Fleuris - which I tried to work out over the weekend but kept coming up with seriously dense, camo-looking fabric that wasn't all that pretty.

 I think part of it is my lack of patience to sit down and swatch something that won't become a project - which I'm slowly starting to get over - and part of it is my inability to part with really nice yarn that I don't want to waste on swatching - which is trickier.  I know I need to start becoming a more savvy yarn buyer and break myself of the "ooh, it's so pretty, but I only want one skein of it!" habit.  But I think I also need to find a new standard yarn with which I can swatch shamelessly.

All in all, what this says is that I need to find more days to just sit with my yarn and meditate.  It might make for a weird picture - me sitting with my legs crossed, palms up, surrounded by a circle of mohair and merino - but I need to get in touch with my resources and let them call out what they want to be, not necessarily what I want them to me.