Rippin' It

Don't you just hate it when you are happily knitting away and then all of a sudden... (insert ominous music) darn it all!  A mistake!  *Insert Pirate expletive*   Grrr.
 I hate when that happens.  Because it means that I either have to chuck it all and start over (shh sometimes I start with another ball of yarn) or just start ripping out my knitting.   Rip it, rip it, rip it!
Have I ever told you how much I hate rippin' it?  Yeah.  I do.  Almost as much as I hate socks.  LOL
IF it's just one or two stitches that I've dropped somewhere along the way, that's no big deal.  I'm a whiz at picking those babies up.  I just grab a crochet hook, stick it into the dropped stitches and wait until I get back around to where they are.  I then just 'hook' them back up all the way to the top.  Wa-la!  No big deal.  BUT if it's a bigger problem than that... I just have to rip it.  Grrr.
I've been working on a little vest for my 3 year old buddy 'Wild Thing'.  It's really cute (LINK) and 'WT' is really cute so I figured it was going to be one of those no brainer, easy peasy projects.  Um... yeah... that's what I get for thinkin'!  I'm making it for his birthday (not until October) so I planned on making a bigger size for him than what he is wearing right now.  *Insert sighing and eye rolling here please*
What I didn't plan on was that the size I was making would magically make itself 2 sizes bigger than what I had circled on the pattern.  I did count!  I DID!  I double checked myself all the way through until I got up to the point where I needed to divide and bind off for the arm pits........ what?!  That's where I discovered that I obviously either counted wrong, or just cast on way too many stitches in the first place.  I tried decreasing but.... still.... this vest might have fit 'WT' when he was much (much) older.  So... what's left?  What else can I try now?
Yippee.
Let's rip.
Whoop.   Not.
So I start ripping out my work, *yes you may insert pirate expletives here*.   I'm ripping away and Big comes up and says.... "Hey!  Why don't you use your ball winder to wind that up?"   What?!
A guy (and a non knitting guy at that!) suggests a really helpful and why this never occurred to me until right now... idea.   Okay, okay... it didn't occur to me UNTIL after he suggested it.   DUH!! USE YOUR BALL WINDER to rip stuff out.

So that's just what I'm doing.  Wow.  It really isn't bad, this ripping out stuff... with a ball winder!!
It makes perfect sense and it really does work.  Why it never occurred to me before I will never know, but from now on.... this is exactly what I'm going to do when I rip it!!
Now the only thing I have to do is NEVER (ever) let Big know that I hadn't thought to use the ball winder for this before.  Shh.