The Ripple Bralette – Part 1

As I finished the simple ribbed balaclava, I turned my eyes onto another WIP. I picked up the already half made Ripple Bralette I had left some time ago. But I was unhappy with the yarn I had chosen for the bralette in the first place. It was a green, scratchy feeling fingering weight yarn with no label anywhere to be found. And so the lesson of contentment starts. Do I continue working with yarn that I currently do not like just so I can finish a project? I wrestled with this for a good amount of time. Ultimately, I decided my end goal was to wear this bralette as much as possible. If this was going to be scratchy against my skin, this is not going to make me want to put this on every day. And so the whole bralette was frogged.

Now I sat with a frogged project and was discouraged. How am I in this spot after just starting the new year!? Wasn’t the point of my resolutions to help me not feel this way? Then I realized, I was putting myself in a perfection box of contentment. I am thinking that both the yarn and pattern have to be perfect in order for contentment to be felt. But what if perfection and contentment do not go together?

I weighed the left over Life In the Long Grass Fine Sock I had just used for my simple ribbed balaclava. It was like fate! I had more than enough to make the bralette out of that yarn. And off I started working on the bralette. I made only one adjustment as I went along – instead of a 2.5″ body, I did 2″. But it wasn’t until I had knitted until the same spot were I frogged before, that I realized maybe I should have knitted that extra 1/2 inch into the body after I tried on the bra. Here I sat at another crossroads – do I just finish the project and just be happy with the shorter bralette or do I frog back and add the ½ inch of ribbing? While I was trying to decide this, I had nice “facepalm” moment as I was re-looking at the pattern. I knit the size smaller than I was suppose to! WWWHHHHYYYY!!! So my crossroads decision went right out of the window at this point. 

Then, it suddenly dawned on me, “Gosh, do I have enough yardage in this current skein to knit the size I need?” I quickly frogged the project so fast, felt like deja vu since this was the second day in a row at this point I had frogged this project, and off to the yarn scale I went. Calculated the math and ended up JUST squeaking by the upper limit of yardage needed. Although I feel so lucky I can still use this skein, why does it feel like this bralette is laughing at me after this will now be my 3rd attempt for a rather easy project? At this point, I decided to take break to allow my pondering thoughts to settle from the fury that was going on in my head. Over the course of the next few days, I was able to get back to the same point I was a couple of tries ago.