I don’t know why, but undoing knitting is called frogging. I like to call it ripping out. It has more passion.

Example:

Cabol says, “I had to frog 10 rows.”

OR

Cabol exclaims angrily, “I had to rip out TEN rows!!!!”

See what I mean? Besides, frogs have a tough enough time living with modern pollution and shrinking habitat. Do they really need to have the negative feelings of hundreds of thousands of knitters aimed at them?

Like most knitter types, I have more than one project in progress. There’s Dollie, who lately has been more sewing than knitting. There’s the giant monster sock. And, there’s my shawl. When I was in Arizona last Turkey Time visiting family with my parents, I somehow snoozled my mom into taking me to a yarn shop with my dad’s credit card. One of the prizes of that trip for me was everything I needed to make cozy shawl Just For Me. I haven’t really made anything Just For Me.

Anyhow, I was fixated on other things and didn’t work on the shawl much until earlier this year. It’s not a tough design, but it’s one of those projects that require concentrating. I can’t work on the shawl when I’m doing anything else. I can’t even work on it when I’m a passenger in a car. The slightest distraction throws things all kaplooey. I probably totally RIPPED OUT my work on the shawl a dozen times or so before I realized I needed utter concentration to get things right. I also realized around that time that whenever I finish a row I have to count all my stitches to make sure I have the right number.

I found that the perfect place to work on the shawl is in this little common area / lounge at work. I can look out the window, kick up my feet, and knit in relative peace. In this perfect place, I’ve managed to knit enough of the shawl that it actually looks like a shawl (albeit for an infant, but still!). Each day I get about four rows done, which may not seem like a lot, but they are long rows, and there’s that having to count at the end of each row and also…well…I’m slow. But anyhow, I’ve been happy with my four rows and the shawl has been growing.

Something happened. I’m not sure what it was, but something has invaded my little happy place. Monday I finished three rows, and there was a mistake in the last one I had to fix on Tuesday. Yesterday, Tuesday, I only finished two rows. Today. Oh…today.

Maybe they call it frogging because when you have to do it you feel like plagues of locusts are coming and frogs should really be falling from the sky.

Today I knit one row. One sad little row. And guess what? Tomorrow? Tomorrow, I get to RIP OUT three quarters of that row to fix a section where I K1 P1 instead of P1 K1. I was reading the instructions for the wrong row. When I realized my mistake (after having happily found I had the right number of stitches for that row and then moved my post it note down to the next row of instructions and realized I wasn’t ready for a picot yet), I began to grieve.

I tried to deny it. No no, surely I must be mistaken! I must have already finished row 5 and just forgotten!

Then I got angry. DAMMIT. Stupid fricking bleeping blipity sun shining causing a glare on my paper! ARG!

The bargaining started next. I tried to convince myself that if I just slipped these stitches here over to the other needle and sorta flipped the yarn on the bad stitches I could fix the problem without having to RIP OUT the ENTIRE ROW. (And maybe I could have if I had a flipping tool better than a slightly dull pencil.)

Finally, as my lunch hour ticked away, I accepted reality. I will indeed have to rip out most of the row and fix the mistake. But not today.

And honestly, maybe not tomorrow. Perhaps I need to switch projects and work on the monster sock for a while. I could go for some straight knitting row after row after row.