Knitting Tips--Top 3 Ways a New Knitting Pattern Can Cause You Grief

Is your new knitting pattern a sweet horse ride?

Photo courtesy of extranoise

Have you found a new knitting pattern you can’t wait to cast on? Hang on a second. Would you leap onto a horse you never met and run a race? Not unless you like bucked off, bitten or run in circles. Let’s approach this set of instructions like a potential skittish horse, get to know each other a little.

It’s Cute But Is It Cute On YOU?

What sense does it make to knit a sweater that detracts from everything wonderful about you? There are good things about every person’s body shape. A good pattern for you enhances good things about your shape while it minimizes things you’d just as soon not have seen. Check finished projects on Ravelry and discover how your pattern looks when worn by a wide range of body types and sizes.

Read It Or Weep

If you’re convinced this style will increase your allure, read your pattern beginning to end. Do you understand every construction detail? If there’s a special stitch, are directions for it included in the pattern? Do you understand them? When you knit your swatch, see if the stitch is any fun or if it gives you fits. Try needles made of wood, metal or plastic in case different material or sharpness of points makes knitting it easier.

Sometimes what the pattern DOESN’T say makes trouble. Does it slide right over a construction detail you could do three different ways? Does it assume you’ll deal with a tricky bit of math on your own? Can you tell which cast on would work best with this pattern? Your favorite might be too stretchy or not stretchy enough.

Highlighter Manhunt

Go through the pattern again with a highlighter or pen in hand as you look for tricky spots. Mark which size you’ll make all the way through. If you plan any alterations, mark where they start and note down what you’ll do differently. Look for this killer phrase: “at the same time!” Mark this phrase and draw big arrows pointing toward all crucial starting points. If you’ll decrease for the neckline, decrease for the armhole, and work a little intarsia on the left breast “at the same time,” Mark Them All!

Show of Hands

How many of us have ripped back miles of knitting because of an unseen or forgotten “at the same time” instruction? Come on, fess up. It can’t just be me! Yeah. Hi there. Cried buckets did you? Yeah, me too.

If you use these knitting tips, you’ll learn your new knitting pattern’s good and bad points. Check for errata online, scribble in your own notes for waist shaping where none is provided, and mark where you’ll make your neckline deeper or shallower to better suit you. Now you’ll have more fun and less grief. No more getting bucked off head first into a barbed wire fence for you.

Best,

Karen

P.S.

Some knitters follow a pattern to the letter every time. Some can’t knit any pattern without changing something. Which kind of knitter are you?