Monday, January 29, 2018

Frogging It

I don’t really have any more to report this week than I did last week (which is why I missed last week’s post), but here I am anyway. :-D

As you may recall, one of my goals for the year was to spend more time doing crafts at night in front of the TV. There were two reasons for this. One, it keeps me from snacking, and two, it keeps me away from the mindless games.

The good news is, I finally sucked it up last weekend and went through my yarn stash. I have a long, red, knitted vest I like a lot, but it doesn’t go with a whole lot. So I found some textured yarn to try knitting myself one. Vests are simple enough, who needs a pattern, right?

I was going to do it in the garter stitch (which is just knitting every row), but after an inch or so I decided that looked tacky. So I started over in the stockinette stitch (knit one row, purl the next) and kept going until it was about 25 inches long. No, I didn’t get carried away, I do want a long vest.

This is where I had to decide how much to start decreasing for the arm hole and neck. I got the armhole looking the way I wanted to, but realized about six or eight inches later I was decreasing the v-neck a little too much. Which meant I had to frog it back, and not just a little, right back to the last couple of rows before the decreasing started because the textured yarn was a pain in the butt to unravel and at one point I even broke the yarn.

Now the point of this story is that this is what I’ve had to do with my current WIP. I’ve had to frog it back a couple of chapters so I can get it back on track. Like frogging back my knitting, it breaks my heart a little to have pretty much wipe out several weeks worth of progress, but for the story to move forward it has to be done.

And just like frogging back my knitting is going to make for a better vest, frogging back my writing is going to make for a better story. One of the hazards of being a pantser I guess, whether it be knitting or writing.

And I have to tell you, every time I hear the word frogging, this is the song that runs through my head. You can thank me later for the ear worm. :-D


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