I am a total perfectionist.  Guilty.

“But wait,” you say.  “I’ve seen typos and mistakes on this blog, and that one post has the wrong pictures, and I’m pretty sure that the third sentence in the second paragraph in your fifth post used the subjunctive mood where you should have used the indicative.”

To which I say,  “Oh crap, let me go back and fix that.”

When it comes to knitting, I’m even worse.  I am merciless with my knitting.  I’ll unravel an entire sweater if I don’t like how a cast-on edge is laying.  It drives my husband nuts.  He’ll shudder and yell “No!” when he sees me start to frog* a project.  But, if I know a project is so messed up, ill-fitting, or just plain wrong to wear on a regular basis, I have no trouble ripping up a project and re-knitting it until it’s perfect.

I do have a rule about when it is necessary to frog a project, though (although if you ask my husband, he’d probably say that I can’t finish a project without ripping it out at least once).  This gem of wisdom was given to me by a little old German lady who owned the knitting shop near my college campus, and I still use it today:

   “If it can’t be seen from the back of a galloping jackass, you don’t need to fix it.”

-Brigitte (I forgot her last name) circa 2008

Practically, this means that if the mistake isn’t big, doesn’t affect the overall fit of the garment, or falls outside of the most visible areas of the garment (for example, in the armpit of a sweater), you can leave the mistake be.

Unless you are dumb and a perfectionist like me.

*Frog-knitterspeak for unraveling a piece of knitting, because you “rrrip-it, rrrip-it.”  A dumb term, but don’t blame me.  I didn’t make it up.