Do you ever reach a point in a project where you look at it and think, "Dang, this would be a lot better if I had changed this one little thing...."
Well, that was me this week. Twice.
MY FROGGING JOURNEY
I try to make it a rule that I only ever have two WIP's at a time. Now that it is time to start knitting Christmas presents, I broke that rule and have three! But.... I frogged two of them this week. The first one is the project that I've referred to on Ravelry as my "Spontaneous Cowl". Well, the problem is right there in the name. Spontaneous -- meaning I didn't plan. At all. I cast on a number of stitches that looked good and just kept going. Cowl -- yeah, i just decided I wanted it to be a scarf instead. So rip rip rip I went. The cowl was looking gorgeous, as you can see. The colors were staggering beautifully. It was working up fast. I had mastered the tunisian knit stitch. But when I saw how wide it was quickly getting compared to how much yarn I had left, I realized that I could have made this into a scarf that was wrapped around your neck twice. I thought about the person I am planning on gifting it to and decided she was more likely to wear the scarf wrapped around twice. Now it is twice as long and the colors are not staggering in the same beautiful pattern that they once were. I am hopefully that as it grows more, I will be less critical. This is the third or fourth time I have frogged this project. Please let it be the last!
The second project to be frogged is my Everest (I will probably call it that when I finally add it to Ravelry). It is a blanket that I started over a year ago. I had fallen in love with cables and decided I was going to knit up a cabled blanket large enough for my queen size bed. Knowing that this was a daunting task, I decided I would hold two strands of worsted weight yarn together so that it would work up quicker. At least that's what I told myself. I bought 6 skeins of Caron One Pound in two different colors - a dark red wine color, and a silverish grey. These colors match my bedspread and sheets perfectly so I was very excited.
Last night, I realized just how much I have learned about knitting in the past year. I kept dreading going back to this project. It was so heavy on my needles and it was super hard to move the stitches around the cable of the long circular needle I created with my interchangeable set. When i was looking at the pattern yesterday, I realized I made the biggest mistake from the very beginning. I was using the same needle size that the pattern called for, even though the pattern only called for one strand of worsted weight yarn and I was using two. Well geeze, Danielle. This is why the edges rippled when I made that first cable twist. This is why it had been so difficult to move the stitches around the needles. This is why my hands were hurting so bad when I worked on it. This is why I never wanted to pick up the project. The straw that broke the camel's back when when the two cables I had connected to make a long enough circular needle separated at the connector. All the stitches just started falling off! I took this as a sign and frogged.
So I went from a 6.5mm needle (seriously, what was I thinking?!) to a 9mm needle. Everything started going so much smoother! It is amazing how much quicker it is working up now that the stitches move freely. I'm still kicking myself over this. Oh, and my cables separated at the connector AGAIN. So, I may need to invest in a better interchangeable set. I'm leaning towards the Addi Click Turbo Rocket set, but please give me suggestions if there is something better out there!
For now, I just bought a 60" length ChiaoGoo circular needle so that I won't have to knit in fear of my needle coming apart again.
IT WAS WELL WORTH IT
Even though it was devastating to start over on two projects this week, I really do think they are going to turn out for the better. I'm trying to focus on well-made projects and enjoying the time spent on them instead of focusing on pumping out as many FO's as possible.
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