The Green Woman And I Visit The Frog Pond With Merciless Efficiency

My recent efforts to clear our home of all unnecessary stuff have extended themselves to my knitting bag. Spurred on by the annoyance with myself for having succumbed to startitis a bit much over the last few months as well as the certain knowledge that some of the projects just weren't working, the Green Woman and I decided to have a frog pond party this morning. These things must be undertaken with a bit of fortification. Behold...the homemade iced coffee, courtesy of my wonderful cold brew toddy system. There is simply nothing better on a hot day.

First up - the summer shell I started just before Memorial Day weekend. Oddly, it didn't even get a Ravelry entry (don't know how I missed that...) and so I'm not going to bother with the details. I will tell you that the reason I'm frogging it is because I was knitting it with a ridiculous amount of tension. Much of this was knit during a very stressful drive home during scary, scary thunderstorms - and the resulting fabric is much tighter than it should be. The stitches were difficult to move around the needle, and my hands would ache every time I picked it up.

I felt much better as soon as I had reduced it to a pile of yarn on the bed.

Then I undid the cast on row for a scarf I had begun with this handspun. I'm just not a lacy scarf sort of girl - as much as I wish I could be. I would rather do a simple shawlette of some sort.

Then I pulled out the big pieces - the warm and cool mandalas I had cast on together in crazy glee. The problem is that they both turned out to be very, very small for shawls. In fact, I had completed 3/4 of the charts...and hadn't even used a full skein of either yarn. That's just wrong. If I attempt it again, I'll need to use a needle at least two sizes bigger than I had been. In all honesty, though, I have another project in mind for the warm yarn (Knit Picks)...a project that is just begging for this color.

I am not at all sure what I will do with the cool yarn (malabrigo lace). In fact, it's proving so difficult to frog that all of my worst fears about it have been confirmed. It's so, so buttery soft that I want to bury myself in mounds of it....but it's going to pill and felt like crazy. It does need some thought.

I also took the Kusha-Kusha scarf off of the active list. I never really started it, and although I know I'll get to it soon I wanted to make sure my project list was as bare as possible. I'm down to just six - two long term lace projects, a beaded shawl, a beaded scarf, a pair of socks and a sweater - and I feel much, much better.

After I finished the post, I went to my Ravelry page so that I could work on linking projects to my blog posts...something I'm horrendously behind on. (As in, I have six months to catch up on!) I'm noticing two things. One, I've done a LOT of frogging this year. Two, there are multiple posts where I talk about feeling better with small WIP lists. Perhaps I need to remind myself of that the next time startitis hits.