knitting highs and lows

[cimorene]

I'm making okay progress on this zigzag blanket, partly out of frustration because I tried to start the Briochevron Cowl pattern by Stephen West, a very popular pattern designer, with my new beautiful merino... and had to start over about 4 times yesterday because the pattern is badly written. It's not the most unclear pattern I've ever seen and there aren't exactly errors; it's just full of omissions that don't signal they are omissions, so you don't know which parts you're going to have to look up beforehand.

The only indication that the pattern is only clear and intuitive to an expert brioche knitter and is actually almost in a kind of shorthand is a note in the introduction that brioche knitting howtos and "classes" by a particular person are great. I've never completed a project in brioche, but I have completed some square samples of brioche rib based on detailed howtos, and it was because they were so fun that I decided I wanted to make a big project; and I thought that since I had the hang of brioche rib and understood what the anatomy of brioche is more or less it should be fine (particularly as the pattern also touts how simple and easily-memorized the pattern repeat is).

So while I could have avoided much of my frustration over the past 2 days if I'd sorted all the finished projects by the most helpful notes and systematically gone through them highlighting passages before I started, I didn't realize that I needed to do that. In spite of the loud consensus among knitters of the pattern that it is confusing and unclear, there's no note on the pattern page to that effect and no update to the pattern itself (common practices on Ravelry in those circumstances which I have come to expect). When I start over for the 5th time later today I will perhaps be slightly more likely to make it past the fourth row.

In the meantime, I'm possibly going to have to mail order more shades of 7 Veljestä for the zigzag blanket...

Comments

[james]

I liked SW's early patterns, but then he sort of... became this wildly popular designer and sort of... went his own way. Like you say - his patterns need a very good editing and they don't get it, but I suspect he has a huge group of regulars who can follow the patterns and don't complain. I bought one of his patterns years back and never even tried making it after I read the first page or two.

Right now I am making a very easy shawl where you increase at the beginning of each row and decrease at the end of every other row and it's perfect for watching tv. The yarn is doing all the colorwork. ;-)

Your blanket looks very bright and cheery!

[cimorene]

Yeah... well, if you're wildly popular you can certainly afford to go your own way in design aesthetic, but I would think if anything he would have more ability to make his patterns user-friendly rather than (apparently) enjoying the freedom to not give a fuck about usability. It's so annoying and quite alienating. I'm not at the point of giving up yet, because I don't want to use my sport-weight yarn on a non-brioche project, but I may have to get a brioche pattern from somebody else to use if my next few attempts don't get better.

Meanwhile I was too annoyed yesterday to start over again and just kept knitting the blanket instead, lol.

[pensnest]

So frustrating when you find a pattern you like the look of but it turns out to be badly written. It's so unnecessary! I was very much enamoured of the Dreambird shawl, but having tried three times and given up in disgust I went to the projects page and found that about half the English-speaking readers had the same problems with it that I did. (The other half, and the German speakers, said what a lovely pattern it was. ???)

Those zigzags are looking extremely cheerful.

[cimorene]

Oh no! I guess maybe her testers were all from the easy-understanding group. How odd, though, that it must be a language issue from what you say, but that it only affected half the English readers is so weird!