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What knitting and your dentist have in common

 

 

Yesterday I had a dentist appointment. Nothing dramatic but not very pleasant, either.

While I was sitting there and waiting for it to be over, I tried to distract myself by thinking of my knitting. And it occurred to me that there are some similarities about knitting and going to the dentist. Or rather, about un-knitting and going to the dentist. Yes, I'm talking about ripping back, also called frogging.

 

Sometimes you notice something about your project that is not quite right. Maybe you should have used a different needle size. Maybe the stitch pattern doesn't look great with this particular yarn. Maybe your project is coming out way too big, or much too small. What will you do? Are you going to ignore it and knit on, like we're sometimes ignoring the dull ache in that back tooth? Are you telling yourself that it will be fine in the end?

 

I've been there, both with the tooth and with the knitting. And let me tell you, it's not going to be fine. The longer you wait to see your dentist, the lengthier (and more expensive) the treatment will be. And the more you knit, the more you'll have to frog when the problem has become so obvious that you can't ignore it any longer.

Better bite the bullet and do it now, before things get worse. Sit down with your knitting and take a critical look at your project, prodding and probing like a dentist examining a patient. What is wrong? What are the chances that it's going to be fine in the end?

 

Try to be realistic. Stitches that are too tight or too loose aren't going to magically fix themselves. Your intricate stitch pattern that is drowning in the colors of your variegated yarn isn't going to suddenly stand out after you’ve added several square feet of the same busy colors. And the sweater that is five inches smaller than the one that fits you isn’t going to grow that much during blocking (unless your swatch did and you’ve factored it in – you did make a swatch, right?).

 

I am all for fudging it and for using tricks to avoid frogging, but sometimes it can’t be helped. If it’s really obvious that there is a problem, and if there’s no other way to fix it, just sit down, take a deep breath, and pull out the needles. Frog it. Start over with a clean slate –  with a different needle size, a different yarn or pattern, a different number of stitches for the cast-on.

And console yourself: Unlike a dentist appointment that sometimes can be quite painful, frogging your project doesn’t hurt. Except maybe your pride. But that is for a different blog post…