Patterns

In my short history of knitting I have learned the value of a pattern.

Patterns are nice. They tell you how things go together and they give you shape and guidance, faith that your project will turn out; just follow the pattern and you will create something beautiful. They are a record of the solutions that those before us have found to the mistakes and difficulties that have plagued knitters since knitting began, and they are an education in structure and technique; a teacher that shows us how to create.

I also have learned that all of the above being true, sometimes patterns just suck. They can be poorly written, overly wordy, confusing, wrong, or just plain ugly.

I encountered some of the bad part of patterns on my bag project. The first problem I noticed was that while the graph for the cable panel had the decreases relevant to the cable shown, there were other decreases that were only talked about in the extremely wordy, and heavy on the parentheses, written directions (I hate the parentheses) which (parentheses are really distracting) were (I can't tell you how many times I messed up because of the stupid parentheses) very hard to follow. I solved this problem by marking the decrease rows on the cable graph, which only sort of worked because I got so engrossed in the cabling that I still forgot to decrease. Luckily, so far, it seems I have forgotten the decreases in the same spots on both sides of the bag so I'm hoping there won't be any stupid looking lumps or sticky-outy-parts because of the bad pattern writing.

The worst is yet to come though, the most heinous of all pattern crimes in my opinion is when the pattern just doesn't work and doesn't make the finished product look like the picture that made you choose to make it. This problem was discovered when I went to knit the button flap that holds the finished bag closed at the top. The flap consisted of a tapering number of stitches with a strange bind off and cast on for the button hole. I had to look in three different places in the magazine to try and figure out what they were doing and then when I actually did it as they directed the flap looked like total crap. And I mean really bad. The button hole was off center and the flap looked lumpy and weird. I tried three times to do it as they directed thinking that somehow I was mistaken and didn't understand what was happening. After ripping it out the third time though I said to myself, "Screw the directions! I'm doing it my way!" And then I did, I made my normal button hole and left as many stitches as I thought the flap needed to be sturdy and it looked great on the first try. Ahhh...success!

This experience just shows that it's important to remember patterns can be valuable but they aren't always right and sometimes you just gotta go with what you know.

Or else I'm kinda thick and can't figure directions out.

Either way the result is the same, right?

Stuck

My bag project has not progressed at all in the last week.

I haven't worked on it because I found a problem...and I wasn't sure of the pattern...and it seemed like the fix might take a while.

The problem that I found was that my stitch count was off by 3, which is a weird number to be off by when you are making a symmetrical pattern, and I wasn't able to figure out where I messed up. The pattern itself is the second problem; the cable panels are charted out but the rest of the directions are written out in a confusing, row by row way. I HATE ...double HATE... the patterns that are written out row by row: "Next row (#312) p3 k22 p200 k1 ssk k3 k2tog p836 K1) repeat to end of row" WTF. There has to be a simple and CLEAR way to write a pattern! I guess my brain just can't turn all of the p's and k's and number blah-blah-blahs into a clear picture in my head of what it should look like. Charts! I really, really like charts.

So...I'm a procrastinator when it comes to things that I think might be difficult (I've been meaning to call the cable company about a problem for the last year and a half)(that's not a lie, it's really been a year and a half) and this problem with the number of stitches looks like it might be difficult. So instead of studying it and tackling it head on like a real go-getter, I turned to cooking. Yes, it's odd, but apparently my unwillingness to do a difficult task pushes me into trying something that is equally difficult and far more unfamiliar. I don't cook. I bake. I prefer the inside of the oven where there is a nice even temperature and the food doesn't do anything crazy (like turn black) unless I totally fall asleep. But this week, I have been using the burners...WHOA! First I made enchiladas with homemade sauce (only slightly burnt), then today I cooked potato salad and corn on the cob. It's as if I went crazy and somehow lost the part of me that says "Hey, that's a burner, they're unpredictable, we don't like those." The best part though is that the food was delicous! Seriously, it was. I was shocked too. Maybe these burners are actually o.k.

Labor Day Weekend

I can't believe that Labor Day is here already. This summer seems to have just started but now it's over and I feel like I didn't even notice it. I think I must have been too caught up inside my head and too full of worries and the grumps to pay attention to what was happening outside. That'll teach me. The coolest nicest summer ever in Minnesota and I didn't take full advantage of it while I could have. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Well...if I'm lucky there will be more summers like this and I will have less worries and irritations during them so I'll be better able to enjoy them!

I got some good stuff done during my crabby cold summer and here is an example:
It's a hat from an Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern that I made for a baby that was born 5 weeks ago. Unfortunately I think she'll probably be three or maybe ten before it fits her but I never claimed to be perfect, and babies are foreign to me. It's cute though, and soft. I used a strand of sock yarn and a strand of Kidsilk mohair and it turned out really nice. Soft enough for a cute little girl.

My next project is a bag; this is the front of it:
This is a project I got a long time ago when my mom and I went to a big knitting convention together. The yarn is a really nice and soft worsted weight and I think it might be undyed. It was in a kit with a pattern for a bag that had cables...and bobles and I-cord and all kinds of complicated funny things that when I looked at it again didn't look like any fun at all. So I looked through my collection of old Interweave Knits magazines (also courtesy of my mom, Thanks Mom!!) and found this great pattern with simple cables and no bobbles and nothing too weird or un-fun. I think it will turn into a lovely bag.