frog-a-thon 2009.

I’d been planning on this for a while, and this morning/afternoon, I finally did it! I dug around in my WIP bins (Rubbermaid containers–yes, I had that many works in progress) and sorted them. I set aside a few for later–I think I might actually finish those. But I pulled these out–11 projects total that I knew I wouldn’t finish. Or, I want to restart them sometime in the future. You can see all the projects I frogged here, but here’s why I chose to frog the following:

Cashmere Arm Cosy. It’s really not fair to call it that, since it’s Lion Brand Cashmere, which is like 10% cashmere or whatever. (ok, I just checked, it’s 13%, close enough…but I digress.) This was a really pretty knit, but A) the pattern was written to knit it flat, which I did, so B) there was seaming at the end and I remember doing such a wacky seaming job, it always bothered me. But more importantly, C) the cosy went from my knuckles all the way up to my bicep, which is just impractical. Because, really, why would I need a glove that covers my entire arm? Would I find myself wearing a tank top in the winter, or something? So, I frogged it. I think I can find a nicer pattern for this yarn. I’ve got 4 balls of the stuff, so I think they are destined to be a pretty cabled hat or something. Also: this cosy was finished back in 2007. 2007! When I was living in New Mexico! It followed me here to Virginia, but alas, it was never meant to have a mate.

Liesl. There’s hope for this one–I love Ysolda’s patterns and I love, love Malabrigo. But I think I might have had some gauge and/or sizing issues, so rather than let this sit on the needles indefinitely, I decided to go ahead and pull it off. In fact, I might restart her in a different yarn because as much as I love the mmmmalabrigo, I have a feeling it might turn into a pilly mess as a sweater.

Peaks & Valleys Socks. I was going to ramble on about how the pattern (which I paid for) is fraught with errors, but I think that’s pointless since this yarn will probably become a scarf on the next go-round. It’s Claudia Handpainted Fingering, which I really like. But this colorway kind of annoyed me because, while both skeins were from the same dyelot, one is quite darker than the other and it was bugging me while working with the second skein. I think I might do something where the dyelot differences won’t be as noticeable–maybe a Chevron Scarf, so the skeins will alternate.

Secret of the Stole. I really didn’t have any heartache frogging this, maybe because I only got to Clue 3 before stalling completely. Also, while the finished pattern (Guinevere) is lovely, I think I’ve decided that I don’t really like stoles in laceweight. I think this yarn (Jaggerspun Zephyr, which is so soft and beautiful) deserves to be a nice triangular shawl. And since I’m so smitten with shawls of late, I’m just not sad because I know the yarn will be used for something else eventually, something I will be more likely to wear.

A very cool thing about frogging so many projects is all the needles, stitch markers, and row counters I’ve reclaimed as a result. The WIP bins: where all my DPNs and row counters go to hide.

At the end of the day, I absorbed a bunch of yarn back into my stash. I feel so much better! All of those unfinished things were just sitting in my closet…lurking…and going to waste, really. I already have specific patterns in mind for some of these yarns. The whole frogging process was kind of therapeutic, even though it took basically all day to rip, wind by hand, and then rewind everything with the ball winder. Luckily, I didn’t have too many problems with knots or tangling, which is good because if I had, I think most of the balls would have been tossed across the room, rather than placed lovingly in a neat pile like this. And I hadn’t realized how many WIPs there were until just now, when I was moving these from “hibernating” to “frogged” status on Ravelry. I might have cut my WIPs down by half.

I think there’s also something metaphorical about unfinished business, and just chucking something that’s not working, and starting over from scratch. Nothing wrong with that at all.