...especially if you write knitting patterns for a living.
Yesterday I had a email exchange with lovely Ravelry member named Stacie, who had some questions about the Tingvoll Slipper pattern. She found a typo in one of the charts, and pointed out some places where I could have been more clear in how I presented the pattern. It was an interesting exchange, in that it demonstrated how two different knitters can look at the same pattern and interpret it in very different ways.
The conversation reminded me of this:
Is it a portrait of a young woman or an old woman? Of course it can be seen both ways, and different people will tend to see one image more easily than the other.
Here's another one:
What is it? It took me a long, long time to make sense of this one (answer at the end of the post*, for those who want it).
Knitting patterns can be like these images--sometimes they just don't make sense when you first read through them, even if the pattern is technically correct. And sometimes, as the designer writing the pattern, what seems obvious and clear to me is in fact nothing of the sort to the knitter who is working through the directions.
In the case of the Tingvoll chart, what was intuitive and felt correct to me was confusing to Stacie, and after reading through her comments, I realized that her interpretation was more logical than what made sense to me personally, and I updated the chart in light of her input.
As a designer who takes a lot of pride in the quality of my patterns, it's really frustrating when errors occur. I'm proud of Tingvoll, and delighted with the response it's received, so having to send out those "whoops, there's an error, sorry everyone!" emails is a total bummer.
To lighten my mood, I thought I post a few "greatest hits" of my knitting blunders.
I've already posted about the dangers of switching how you hold the colors when knitting stranded color work.
How about the importance of double checking that you are using the correct sized needle? What might happen if you don't? This, perhaps:
To give some perspective, I wear a size 9 shoe, and the red and white slipper fits me. The blue and white slipper is over 14" long and 13" around. It's huge. How did this happen? I meant to make a size large, knit on size 8 dpn. Somehow I managed to grab size 9 dpn--I was positive I checked the size, positive!--and then I knit away happily, enjoying my annual viewing of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, oblivious to the monster I was creating. I knit the entire slipper before I stopped to think "hmmm, something is amiss here...".
Proof that gauge does, in fact, matter.
This is my absolute favorite knitting goof:
No, I am not preparing to attend a Star Trek convention or trying to bring back new wave, Klaus Nomi inspired fashion. I was trying to knit some smooth fitting, short-row shaped shoulders. You know, like this:
Ah, that's more like it.
The thing about short-rows is, you have to work them in the correct direction, so they follow the shoulder line (rather than angling up, away from the shoulder).
The project is Trace, a design I did for the Shibui Heichi booklet. When I realized my mistake, I snapped a photo of myself wearing it (second photo above) and emailed it to the Shibui offices, with the subject line "live long and prosper".
Sara Morris (of Rose City Knits) was then a Shibui employee, and responded by sending me an improved version of the photo.
Yeah, I had to rip out the shoulders and neck and re-knit them, but this picture makes it totally worth it.
I used to teach a lot of knitting classes, and would frequently suggest to my students that they look at every mistake as a chance to learn something. In the case of the overgrown Tingvoll Slipper, I now have a fantastic example of what happens when gauge and needle size are not given the attention they deserve. When a knitter emails me with a question about a pattern I've written, it gives me a chance to think "how could I have made the instructions more clear? where was my blind spot?" My initial reaction is almost always frustration that I let a mistake slip by me, but once I move past that, I usually can find a lesson that will make me a better pattern writer/teacher/knitter.
And sometimes I get a really awesome photo out of the deal!
*(It's a cow! Click here if you want some help seeing it.)
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