What is Frogging, & Why You Should Do it!
Have you ever heard someone refer to “frogging” their crochet project? When you’re new to the craft, you’re naturally going to have some questions about this term. If you’re like me, you are likely wondering what in the world frogs have to do with crochet, am I right?
Well, you’re in the right place!
Frogging is not a technical term that is written in patterns. It’s actually more of a slang term used to refer to unraveling or pulling out stitches in your work. If you are repeatedly pulling out stitches, or rather, “ripping” out stitches over and over again it sounds like a frog.
“Rip it, Rip it, Rip it”
Hence the slang term of frogging was born!
There are two main reasons that you would frog your work.
- The first one is fairly obvious. You made a mistake, and you have to go back and rip out those stitches. (Don’t worry, it’s painful for everyone, but ya gotta do it!)
- The second reason would be something along the lines of cannibalizing one project to feed another and reclaiming that yarn.
When I first started crocheting, I hated ripping out my project. (I still do to this day! It’s painful, it sucks, it’s a waste of time, and I am loathe to do it.)
When first starting out, I would stubbornly continue on with whatever I was making even though I knew I’d made several errors, and it looked awful.
I would get to the end of the project and I’d cry because it didn’t look anything like what I had imagined in my mind. (Or it wouldn’t look like the sample photo for the pattern!) I hated ripping out stitches because I’d spent so much time and energy putting them in, and it broke my heart a little to pull them out.
And more than that, I just felt like a failure!
I felt like I somehow didn’t measure up because I had made mistakes and I didn’t want to admit it to myself. As silly as that sounds, frogging stitches somehow reflected my worth as a person and my talent as a crocheter. Crazy, right?
When I finished my third or fourth bad project and was so frustrated I wanted to give up, I figured I’d better start accepting that maybe I wasn’t perfect, had made some mistakes and I had better start frogging my stitches.
It hurt every time I had to unravel, but a funny thing started happening. My projects were turning out a lot better!
I learned a valuable lesson that I’m here to pass on to you.
Start frogging those stitches!
Rip them out, and don’t worry about how long it took you to put them in. Yes, it’ll hurt a little when you’re frogging your work, But if you’re lucky, (or maybe not as stubborn as I was…) you caught your mistake early on and you won’t have to remove too many hard-earned stitches.
If you caught your mistake a good way in, my heart goes out to you. There’s nothing worse than frogging half your work because you didn’t realize your mistake until it was too late.
(PS. I have so many projects in the “time out” pile because I know I’ve made mistakes and I’m too mad at them to face the ugly truth of frogging all that work…so there they sit!)
If you bite the bullet and end up frogging those stitches, the end result will be so much better! Your project will look amazing, I promise! You’ll also feel better because you have projects that are turning out the way they’re supposed to, and you won’t feel like throwing in the proverbial towel.
(Or the actual towel if that’s what you’ve been crocheting!)
So, now you know what frogging means. Now you know that you’re not a failure because you *gasp* are human, made a mistake and have to correct it.
Frogging your work can be painful. Sometimes it takes a while to realize this fact, but I promise you’ll be so much happier with the end result if you do it.
Learn from my mistakes, don’t be stubborn. Get to frogging there sister!
