freakin' frogs

you’ve heard that old saying, ‘the hurrier I go, the behinder I get...’ well, yes, I’m rushing, trying to get this beige thing finished so I can move on to the more important job of experimenting. Sure enough, I blow right past the neckline shaping and I’m at the top of the piece, RC170, before realizing I forgot to stop at RC135 and begin the shaping at the centre side for the vee neck...dirty, rotten &%*?!#...., I do so hate ripping out! But, I though, oh well, when life gives you lemonade, add vodka and have a drink - is that what they call a mixed metaphor? don’t answer that!
Maybe my new young girls don’t know how to rip out quickly - so, if you’ve heard this before, forget I said anything!

Keep weight on the work, evenly - notice I still have the ribber comb in the bottom of my piece even though this portion of the front is stockinette - I leave the comb in to make it easy to weight evenly, but I have the work coming over the front of the rib bed - I think it is easier to do shaping when the work is out front and you can see better, watching for mistakes or floating and tucking stitches - now, carefully bring the needles out, leaving the stitches in the hooks. When you pull sideways, drawing width-wise on the yarn to unravel, the stitches flip back and one row is pulled out in less than 10 seconds!!

The biggest problem with unravelling is keeping track of the number of rows - what I do is use the empty needles at the opposite end to count with - so, pull out 2 rows, bring out 2 needles, rip 2, count 2, etc. It’s not totally foolproof, but it works for me - if I didn’t have empty needles on the main bed, I’d count on the rib bed. Then when my selected needles show that I’ve ripped out the required number, I turn back the row counter.

Happy frogging!