To frog or not to frog - that is the question

Frogging to me conjures up pictures of my youth when my friends and I would slop merrily along in our overly large (you'll grow into them) Compo style wellies armed with a fishing net and a jam jar into the fields to the local ponds. We would then proceed to deprive Momma Frog of her frog spawn and take them home and then on to school to watch the evolution of nature. We always kept our frog spawn in a fish tank on the window bottom at school and every day we had to search (and draw) for any changes in the tank, The poor little beggars used to be poked and prodded on a daily basis and always managed to make the final stage of turning into frogs over the weekend and so annoy the school caretaker and scare the cleaners half to death as there was always a few Houdini frogs that managed to escape the tank and make a bid for freedom.

Anyway I digress as per usual. I was searching through my stash and found a half made jacket in mohair that I had started many moons ago for a friend who after I had knitted the back and 2 fronts told me that she was allergic to mohair. She didn't know I had been making her a jacket as a surprise present so I just left it as it was. Too small for me to finish for myself I decided last night to re-use the wool. Thoughts came into my mind as to why the Americans and increasingly the Brits have started using the word frogging to describe the process. I looked in the dictionary and frog still has the same meaning as I remember it. An amphibian creature or an ornamental fastening. So why do we frog wool? I then looked up my word - unravelling and that meaning hadn't changed either. To undo or ravel knitted fabric separating tangled threads. Unravelling is a wonderful word it describes the action of parting the superglued together strands of mohair with loving care. I will leave frogging to Kermit and from now on I will unravel!

I started using the unravelled mohair for the crocheted bolero that I was toying with the idea of using the purple wool for. I thought a 6.50mm hook would be too large for double knit but on starting the pattern with the mohair I realise why they have used a large hook. The pattern stitch is really closely worked as it is mostly double crochet and half trebles. I worked about an inch or so of it last night whilst watching a programme about a couple who had 12 kids.Lovely kids but rather them than me. The father was a real hippy type when the going got tough he would take to the hills and play this wooden hurdy gurdy instrument and at one stage I thought his wife was going to chop it up! She kept saying how can he go off and make that awful noise when there are so many chores left undone. That's a man for you! I wasn't too keen on the bit where they emptied the septic tank. I was eating my supper at the time!

The hat is something I made up from left over wool from a couple of previous hats. Not enough of each colour to make a hat I decided to combine them to make a dog walking hat. The pattern is one of my own and it kind of twists when its on so the "cables" don't lie straight. I quite like the style though and may make it again one day in a nice yarn. I need to make it a bit shorter though as it falls over my eyes. All of my hats do that. I must be lacking in brains to fill up my head and make it the same size as everyone elses.