The Frog Pile: Learning to Love Mistakes

Every crocheter has a frog pile. For the uninitiated, “frogging” means ripping out stitches—“rip it, rip it”—until your project is nothing but a sad little heap of yarn again. The first time it happens, it feels like pure failure. Hours of work gone in seconds. All that effort, unraveled with a tug. But ask any seasoned maker, and they’ll tell you: the frog pile isn’t the graveyard of crochet. It’s the classroom.

Mistakes aren’t wasted time. They’re practice. They’re proof that you care enough to fix something that isn’t working instead of shrugging and moving on. They’re also a reminder that crochet, like life, isn’t about perfection—it’s about persistence. Every time you rip back, you’re showing yourself that the process matters as much as the end result. Some of your best projects will come out of frogged beginnings, reworked with more patience, sharper skills, and maybe even a brand-new idea that wasn’t there the first time.

If you’ve ever tried to push forward with a mistake, you know the feeling. You convince yourself no one will notice. You keep stitching, hoping it will “blend in.” But crochet is honest. That one missed stitch or twisted loop usually shows up later, front and center, reminding you that ignoring mistakes doesn’t make them disappear. Frogging might sting in the moment, but it clears the path for something better. It’s ripping back in order to move forward.

And honestly? Frogging teaches humility. It’s easy to think you’re in control until yarn proves otherwise. Crochet doesn’t care how confident you feel—if you miscount, your project will let you know. But every ripped row is a chance to start again. A chance to try a different stitch, a different hook, a different approach. It’s resilience in action. The frog pile isn’t a pile of failures—it’s a record of your willingness to begin again.

There’s also something strangely freeing about frogging. It forces you to let go. That blanket you tried three times before it looked right? Those hats that came out lopsided until you found the right rhythm? They’re all part of the same journey. Frogging teaches you that progress isn’t always linear. Sometimes the only way forward is backward, and that’s okay.

If you look at it another way, the frog pile is proof of growth. The projects you’re willing to rip back now might be the ones you would have settled for a year ago. That shows you’ve raised your own standards. You’re no longer content with “good enough”—you want better. And that’s the mark of a maker who’s evolving, not failing.

Some crocheters even keep their frogged yarn in plain sight as a reminder that mistakes aren’t the end of the world. Those messy balls of re-wound yarn carry the history of every attempt, every restart, every decision to keep going. They’re not shame—they’re evidence of grit.

So don’t fear mistakes. Don’t fear the frog pile. Keep frogging, keep reworking, keep stitching. Because every “failed” project is really just part of the journey. Someday, when you hold up a finished piece you’re proud of, you’ll know that the pile of unraveled yarn in the corner had a hand in it, too. It pushed you to start again, to keep learning, to get better. And in the end, isn’t that what crochet—and life—is really about?