rip-it, rip-it, rip-it

Yesterday there was a whole lotta froggin' going on. Instead of our normal Saturday gathering at Rebecca's, the girls came over to my place for a little frogging party. With all of the cleaning out, simplifying and reorganizing going on, I thought that most of us also probably had some UFOs and undesirable FOs hanging around.

I myself had a couple things that needed to be taken care of, namely this shrug and this hat. Despite my enthusiasm at the time, you can tell in the shrug photo that there were going to be problems. (BTW - you may notice by the length of my hair that this was one of my earlier FOs.) This particular FO made one appearance at the office during which I tugged on it all day and never felt comfortable. I was inspired to frog-it when I saw Glampyre's pattern for the City Shawl. I thought it would be a perfect use for all of this Lion Brand Chenille. It is still a rather nice shade of green (although it appears they have repackaged and revamped their chenille since I bought it. I don't have the ball bands anymore, but I'm pretty sure it was called something different at the time...although my brain is rarely to be trusted). The hat on the other hand, was never meant to fit a normal human head. It was part of a Halloween costume that involved a dog head, so clearly it was always destined for the frog pond.

Cora frogged a sweater and de-seamed a second one. Knitzalot reclaimed god-knows-how-many balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino from a Simply Marilyn. Krys frogged a sock toe and an endpaper mit, and Jessica frogged some Fixation stockings (after already doing quite a bit of frogging on her own). And Marisa happily knit threw it all.

I think the funniest thing in all of this frogging, was seeing the craziness that was our early knitting endeavors. My goodness the true ingenuity behind it all! Gosh darn it, we may not have had the knowledge base behind us with those first projects, but we sure didn't let that stop us from finding a solution!! The afternoon heard several exclamations of - what IS this? and - WHAT did I do?

There was also a bit of munching, including some fabulous red velvet cup cakes (Thanks Cora!) and some super yummy fresh guacamole courtesy of Trader Joe's. I made it, but all props have to go to Trader Joe's fresh guacamole kit. For around $2.60 they give you all the veggies you need to make fresh guacamole. It took less than 10 minutes to chop everything up and the 4 cups that 2 kits made was entirely gone by the end of the day. So get some, it was good!!

Jenny also had some fun yesterday. She met so many new friends! She had to give them her initial non-inviting welcome, but she quickly settled in and had a really great time. This was a totally spontaneous picture, she was hoping to get some fallen chips and ended up scooping K's yarn up with her nose. And in hoping to get said chips, she posed for quite some time before she decided that the yarn on her nose was really quite ticklish. She also found a new place to hang out...on top of Krys' knitting and yarn.

What?

In the end, I ended up with some newly refreshed chenille yarn ready (whenever I am) for the City Shawl.

I also didn't end up frogging the hat. Cora had a great idea of how to repurpose it into a bag. It is still destined for the Goodwill pile, but at least now it will be functional for someone.