I am a ruthless frogger.

I can like a pattern but frog it simply because I’m not fond of the yarn I’m using for it. I can like a particular yarn and frog it because I don’t like what I chose to knit, too.

If my gauge is wonky compared to the swatch, I’ll frog it. If the yarn looked good in the swatch but not the project, I’ll frog it. If I make a mistake I can’t fix, or drop too many stitches, I’ll frog the project.

If the yarn’s too heavy for the season, I’ll frog. If the yarn is too light, I’ll frog.

If I’m bored with a project, I’ll frog it. If I’m annoyed with a project, I’ll frog it. If I come up with a better idea for a project, I’ll frog it. If it’s taking to long, I might frog it, too.

Finally, if my project goes to sleep for too long, a definition which varies by project, that’s a sign there’s something wrong with it. Off to the frog pond it goes.

Basically, if anything at all is even remotely wrong, I frog away happily. I sing “Thank God, and Greyhound! You’re gone.” and I think nothing more of it.

The thing I like about most knitting is that it’s not a forever relationship unless you want it to be. Cutting into cloth, that’s a forever relationship, and I’m afraid of that kind of commitment. But knitted fabric is not cut fabric. As long as it’s not mohair, frogging’s a breeze. Just rip it out and start over. There’s no waste.

Mohair is another story. I love it, but it’s just hard to frog and start over if you frack up. It simply must be an obvious perfect match to the project. In my book that means called for by the designer, who has already cursed it’s glorious fuzzy and notoriously un-frog-able goodness. If it’s not, I’m not willing to make the time commitment to experiment. There are just too many things that can go wrong, and when they do, they’re, sadly, often permanent.

Tonight, for example, the Gatsby yarn socks went into the frog pond for the second time. Why? I don’t care to finish them as socks. At the very least I don’t care to finish them as Falling Leaves socks, and that’s reason enough.

Why not?

I dislike having too many (which is an arbitrary and variable number) unfinished projects on the needles. Maybe I”m just not in the mood for sock knitting. It’s hard to say. Most likely the yarn will go into another sock yarn lace scarf, though I’m not sure if I’ll use an existing pattern or make something up myself. In any case, the yarn has been returned to the stash to age a bit before I return to it.

My blue jeans shawl is inching toward the frog pond, too, in favor of a different shawl pattern that better shows the yarn. Maybe it’ll be a pi shawl. Maybe a large scarf. It’s hard to say, but it’s very likely that I’ll have it frogged by tomorrow night.

Maybe I’m indecisive. Maybe it’s just my way of dealing with “start-itis.” Maybe I’m a perfectionist and won’t settle for anything less than my vision of the perfect marriage of yarn and project.

No matter how you choose to look at my ruthless frogging, the second most common sound associated with knitting in this house is the gentle chirping of frogs in the night. Rip-it. Rip-it. Rip-it. I think it’s a beautiful sound.

In our house, we don’t look forward to the Fourth of July so much.  It’s not that I’m not patriotic, or that I don’t appreciate the day off.  It’s just that with the general hip-hooray around the holiday, particularly in the form of (usually drunken) yahoos shooting off illegal fireworks smuggled in from surrounding states with more lenient laws, and the traffic, and in particular this year’s flooding tragedy, it’s just not all it’s cracked up to be.

That said, we’re a biking house and getting the Fourth of July out of the way generally means that it’s time for “The Tour.”  This year there’s a broad field of individuals and teams to root for and a slew of new rules and changed rules to make the competition more interesting.  I’m torn between Team Columbia and Garmin-Chipotle. Both are new teams to the tour this year, though there are a few familiar faced (to cycling fans) on both teams, and neither team really looks to have a chance at the General Competion (the fabled maillot jaune, or yellow jersey) but I’ve always found the maillot vert (green jersey for sprinters) and maillot a pois rouges (polka dot jersey for the king of the mountains) to be the more interesting and exciting portions of the Tour anyway, so it’ll be interesting to follow the tour for those parts of the race only for a change.

Of course, we’ll be watching the recast on Vs. in the evening, so I’ll have good knitting time for my current projects.  That’s the current theory, anyway.

(No, I won’t be doing the “Tour de Fleece” since I don’t spin and there doesn’t seem to be much of a Tour de France Knit-along this year - if I can judge by the blog activity.  I wouldn’t be interested, anyway.  I find knit-alongs too be too much pressure for some reason.)

I’m half tempted to start a yellow shawl to work on while watching the tour.  That could be great fun.  On the other hand, I’m so enjoying my blue jeans leaf shawl that I hate to put it aside just to knit a yellow shawl while watching the race so characteristically known by the jersey of that color.  Maybe I’ll just say it’s blue for my favorite teams’ jerseys.  USPS wore predominantly blue, as did Team Discovery.  Both Team Columbia and Garmin-Chipotle have predominantly blue jerseys, too.

I know I’ve really got no room to complain about the effects of the flooding here in Cedar Rapids since the only losses I’ve had were ones that affected the whole community, but I’ve still been struggling with dysphoria. My asthma is bad enough that I can’t go help with the clean-up. I could help with reconstruction, but people aren’t ready for reconstruction yet. Some can’t even begin clean-up until someone else tells them if they can rebuild. I’d donate books to the library, but they’re in no shape to take donations yet. It’s like everything’s on hold right now, waiting on something (decisions, funding, repairs, inspections), before things can move forward.

As part of my whole mood, I frogged everything that wasn’t done and wasn’t a gift or a sock, just to give myself a sense of having done something without waiting for someone or something else before I could go forward. Once things were frogged, I pulled out new yarn and started this:

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