Keep your knitting needles crossed...

for me - as I 'frog' aka 'cleanse*' yet another knitting project:

This jumble of partially undone knitting shows only a portion of the 148 stitches pulled out from a circular needle. After completing the 2/2 ribbed body of this sleeveless tank top/vest, I happily moved on to shape the armholes in the same ribbing, followed by working the front section (the ribbing continues) with simultaneous decreases for neckline and armhole. Oops, a little mistake here. Oops, another wee error made there.
Crap. Lots more weird things happening...

That's when I decided to rip out at least 1" of yucked-up rows to get back to the tubular body. Better to begin anew where things first screwed up (read: I screwed up).

It isn't going well.
The ribbon yarn is gorgeous and fun to knit with. At the same time, it's slippy-slidey stuff. What would normally be a straightforward pulling out of rows followed by relatively easy picking up of stitches has become something of a nightmare - disappearing loops and rapidly dropping knits and purls.

As the ribbon yarn continues to slip away from the rescue needle and down into the body of the tank top, I'm being forced to take out more rows to get to another workable section. Problem is, as the cleansing continues, the knitted piece keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller...

This is where I am in the ripping out process. Last night (round about 1:00AM), I was trying to pick up every single one of those (damned) stitches with a straight needle. I failed miserably. Pulled out more rows. Tried again by feeding through with a tapestry needle and contrasting yarn. Things got worse. Yanked a few more rows down. Unbelievably awful. Even more rows fall away.
Eyes: glazed over.
Muttering: You-Don't-Want-to-Know-What-Expletives.
Frustration level: high.

However - I wasn't about to throw in the towel (er, yarn ball) just yet, though the project was abandoned for the night as I headed off to bed. It seemed a good idea to renew my depleting energy as well as channel positive knitting karma for the morrow.

We're well into a brand new day and it's time to brave the frogging/cleansing again. Now I'm armed with a smaller longer circular needle and a new 'trick' - shown here (see the video for 'Inserting a needle into destination row, before unraveling'), so it just may work...

[needles crossed]

* the term 'cleanse' is used by some of my fellow knitters - based on the notion that it feels so much better to 'cleanse' than to 'rip out' or even to 'frog'.