Bear with me.

Imagine you’re knitting a scarf. You’re about two thirds of the way done, and it’s coming along nicely. You’ve got lots of stripes of different colours, and it’s going to be a good length–once around the neck and then a jaunty flip over the shoulder length–and you’re happy with it.

Pretty happy with it. Yeah. It’s going to be a good scarf.

Hmm.

But not a great scarf.

Is that really the length you want in a scarf? What sort of weather would you wear that in? Wouldn’t it be better if it was just a bit longer? Maybe twice around the neck, and tuck the ends into the front of your coat long. That’d keep you warm.

And how about those colours? They’re great colours, sure–you’ve got red and orange and green and blue and it sounds like it should clash but it really doesn’t.

However.

It could be… snazzier. Maybe–just maybe–you throw some magenta in there too. Or cyan. Or cerulean. (Polka dots? No.) But something that pops.

Now that would be a scarf.

The tricky part is, you can’t just add the new colour and the extra length at the end, oh no. You’ve got to weave it in. You’ve got to add a stripe in near the start, then another few in the middle, and again at the end, and it’s got to flow, seamlessly, as if the new colour had been there all along and the scarf was always going to be this long.

That’s the tricky part.

I’m getting there though.