If at first you don't succeed, rip, rip, rip again!

 

After one jumper which was abandoned mid-make, and a second jumper which I haven't the heart to admit just didn't work, I have been thinking a lot about frogging. I love the term frogging, largely because non-knitters have a look of acute confusion when it's used as a verb (rip it, rip it). What I do not love, is subjecting my hard work to this act of destruction.

But should it be considered such a destructive act? Am I not giving frogging it's due, not looking at its benefits? Once I had frogged Phillipa I re-used the wool and started again, making something better and still beautiful. And here is the wonderful thing about knitting, being able to salvage and recycle.

In the past, when kids had jumpers knitted by their mothers, and families couldn't afford new clothes very easily, it was common to rip back a jumper, add a little more yarn, and make a slightly bigger jumper. I adore this idea, that there was no waste. New and beautiful things were created out of the very fibre of items that were already worn and loved.

Knitting is not a cheap hobby, especially if you want to use good quality and beautiful yarn, so recycling in this way means both saving money, and not having to simply throw away a yarn that you bought because you fell a little (or a lot) in love with it.

It's a hard choice to make, to reverse weeks worth of work. So I got curious about why people make the decision, why do knitters frog their work?

I spent a while on Ravelry, looking over the simply wonderful projects people have completed, but I spent more time reading about the frogged projects, and why people had chosen to do it. I found many reasons such as 'the fit was bad', 'the yarn doesn't work for this project', 'I just hate it', but the reason a few people gave which I really loved was that they loved the yarn and had a better project in which the yarn would be so much better. In this, the frogging is a loving act, giving something a new life in which it will be even more loved.

So I shouldn't feel sad when something must be frogged, I should feel excited about what it will now become.