As a new designer I’ve spent countless hours ripping back designs and I’ve narrowed it down to the 4 biggest knitting and crochet design mistakes that end in massive frogging sessions. The great news is that these mistakes can be easily avoided! The bad news is that it takes time outside of working on your actual sample to do this but trust me, it is worth it in the end. You really can save a massive amount of time. 

I’ve made a video outlining this blog post if you’re more of a visual person.

Otherwise you can read everything below, real quick before we get started…

What is Frogging?

If you haven’t heard of this term before it comes from RIP-IT, RIP-IT. It sounds very similar to the RIBBIT of a frog but stands for ripping out your knit or crochet project. Sometimes we frog a row,  sometimes we frog an entire sweater. Frogging can be especially painful when you experience it for the first time, when you’re on a deadline, or when you’re undoing a large amount of work. This is why I’m also sharing 2 coping mechanisms for frogging at the end of this article.

DISCLAIMER

This post is about avoiding massive frogging when designing a new pattern and is not meant to be interpreted as  “the only way to design”.

Now let’s get into the major mistakes that lead to frogging when designing a new pattern.

4 Biggest Design Mistakes That Lead to Massive Frogging…and How to Avoid Them

Mistake #1

Not Swatching 

Without a swatch, you are LITERALLY guessing at everything and purely winging it. It may feel like you’re saving time by skipping the swatch and if you do everything right on the first try, sure, you are saving a little time, but who does everything right on the first try? ESPECIALLY when you are trying to create something absolutely new and original!? Swatching provides the essential information needed to plan a design. It gives you the information necessary to calculate how many stitches you’ll need for your finished dimensions and how much yardage you’ll need to make the full sized project. It confirms whether or not you’re happy with the density, drape, and overall look and feel of how your design behaves. It also confirms things like whether you’re happy with the color combination you picked out. 

The Fix

Don’t skip swatching! It’s a simple fix but hard to execute. It’s tempting to skip swatching due to  the commonly held false belief that skipping a swatch will save you time. Instead replace that belief with the more accurate statement that swatching almost always saves more time than it takes. This can become a new mantra to repeat to yourself to help curb impulsivly starting without a proper plan.

Mistake #2

Not Including Shaping in The Swatch

Including shaping in your swatch gives you the opportunity to test any concepts on a small scale. You’ll be able to get a good idea of whether or not you’re shaping plan will work out and behave the way you intend it to. It also gives you the opportunity to ensure that your stitch pattern and shaping perform together the way you think they will such as whether pattern repeats line up or not. Your swatch will show most shaping problems right away allowing you to fix problem areas before your project gets too large. This will greatly reduce the amount of frogging necessary and potentially save you several hours of work.

The Fix

Think about the overall construction of your design and plan to include its shaping in your swatch.  This could include any increases or decreases planned for shaping a shawl, shaping the yoke of a sweater, or shaping the crown of a hat.

Mistake #3

Making The Swatch Too Small

This is one of the main reasons a swatch will lie. Your finished design is probably not going to be a 4” square (the most commonly recommended swatch size) so it is likely to behave differently in its larger and heavier form, not to mention the minor changes in your gauge that come from the way you hold and work on a small piece of fabric versus a large one. Making a swatch that’s too small also makes it difficult to “see it all” depending on the stitch pattern, construction, and colors you choose. This is especially true for larger designs like sweaters, blankets, and large shawls. For example, I’m currently working on a shawl where my main stitch pattern is about 6 inches wide and 12” long. To minimize frogging I have to swatch the entire stitch pattern before I start trying to shape it into its full size.  

The Fix

Make your swatch as large as necessary within reason. Ensure your swatch size will give you a good idea of how your full stitch pattern or color pattern will look and how gravity and wear will affect it. The larger your designs finished size, pattern repeat, or color repeat, the larger your swatch should be. A 4” square can be a starting point, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend making a swatch smaller than that. 

Mistake #4

Making a Mistake in the Math 

At some point, you made a typo in the math, used the wrong number, used the wrong formula, or are missing a step of the calculations necessary to create your design. Let’s say you did the math for the construction of a circular yoke sweater but you forgot to check that the rate of your increases lined up with the multiple of your stitch pattern. As you get halfway down the yoke you may realize that things aren’t lining up and that you have to rip back several hours of work (ask me how I know…). 

The Fix

You can double and triple check your math, ask a friend to look it over, or pay a tech editor to check it before you start.

Why I Don’t Hate Frogging As Much Anymore

It comes down to a change in behavior and a change in mindset. My mental attitude towards frogging has changed therefore my relationship with frogging has changed. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t like frogging whatsoever, but I’ve made changes to my behavior and my mindset that make it easier for me to deal with the times that I do end up ripping out hours of work.

2 Coping Mechanisms for Frogging

#1 A Change in Mindset

Accept Frogging as Part of The Process

Whether you’d like to admit it or not frogging is a part of the designing process and the sooner you make peace with that, the easier it will become. The decision to frog a design almost always comes from a blatant mistake or disconnect between your expectations and reality as the design progresses. This is all part of the learning process! Think about it, you’re working on creating something that has never been made before. You can do your best to plan, and avoid the major mistakes discussed above, but sometimes that’s not going to be enough. You’re testing something that is not only most likely new to you but also hopefully new to everyone! It would be ludicrous if you got everything right all of the time on the first try with no mistakes. While you can take steps to minimize frogging it is not completely avoidable altogether. It’s best to both acknowledge and accept its part in the process.

#2 A Change in Behavior

Calculate Your Time

Knowing how long it takes to create a design can be very helpful to put things into perspective. If you make a mistake at the end of your design and need to frog the entire thing, how much time will you lose exactly? Knowing these numbers upfront helps curb any impulsivity that’s urging you to rush through the swatching and planning process. It also helps when it comes to planning for deadlines. Take the time to swatch and plan your design. Use a spreadsheet to calculate how many total stitches are in your entire design. Once you’ve started making your sample set a timer for a few minutes. Working at a comfortable pace, see how many stitches you can complete before the timer goes off. The longer you time yourself the more accurate your predictions will be. For the ease of math, let’s say you timed yourself for a minute and you were able to create 20 stitches and you’re designing a blanket with a total of 20,000 stitches. 20,000 stitches / 20 stitches per minute = 1000 minutes worth of work to create the blanket which equals over 16 and a half hours. Knowing how much time you stand to lose makes it easier to slow down and plan properly and it also makes it easier to prepare for deadlines. Make sure you have enough days of padding to account for the possibility of having to frog more than half of the project.

I hope you found this post both informative and valuable. I hope this article will be able to save hundreds of designers thousands of hours.