knitting

As much as I love knitting, there are some things that just get under my skin about my hobby. I hate to start a pattern and not get it, so I have to rip out repeatedly. (Come on, who likes that?). But worse than that, it really ticks me off when I get patterns that are written so poorly that they are hard to follow, or they assume you know too much. Some people simplify their patterns so much, they can be really confusing, especially to beginning knitters.

However, even worse than that are the patterns that are just WRONG, and they publish them that way, and then publish errata (corrections) later. Half the time, you don’t find the errata until you’ve finished the project, and worked the problem out yourself, or discovered the pattern is wrong after you’ve worked a lot of it.

That is so discouraging, not only because you’ve worked hard to make your knitted piece, and now, it’s far less than perfect, but because it seems like pattern designers and publishers are taking advantage of us. I’m a cross-stitcher, too, and you really don’t see mistakes like that in cross-stitch patterns. Publishers do test pieces, and show the photos, so you know how the finished pattern will look. Knit publishers show photos, too, so somebody had to knit that item, but they let them go with mistakes, which is frustrating to knitters.

It’s also just wrong that you spend good money on yarn, and then discovered you’ve screwed up a garment or item because of a faulty pattern. They should make sure these patterns are right before they release them. It happens everywhere, which is also frustrating. I just downloaded a pattern from the DIY show Knitty Gritty, (which I love), but the pattern is not the same as they showed on the show! Now that REALLY chaps my hide! What can we do about this? Knitters unite, and demand better quality control in knitting patterns!

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