WIP Woes and Whimsies........

Autumn Leaves Cardigan....

 Good morning my lovelies, just like the weather outside today....my WIP looks lovely enough but underlying nasties are waiting in store to swallow me up with frustrations.....trialling my patience like you would not believe. And yes that does take a lot. So what's up you ask? Well I shall tell you.

Dare I say it? Normally I would not. Its not nice.....even if it is true. This pattern my friends....its badly written. I have looked at it sideways, read other peoples comments about how nice it was even though they all had to rewrite the pattern to finish it. Of course I assumed they had changed it to fix the shape or something. Not one person pointed out the obvious, that it was not written properly in the first place!

The first thing I noticed was there was no +1 added to the pattern repeat. So the first leaf  is not perfect like the rest of them. You have 310 stitches on the needles and the pattern panel works over 10. As I was in a bit of a hurry and did not fancy pulling back the 8 rows or so to add it in, I just kept going. After all it did not look too bad. Next up we decrease in the garter stitch section and of course then the patterns don't line up and we are left with extra stitches on one end. I am not so sure about the logic of the amount of stitches decreased or about the way they are position. After pulling it back and trying to work it out several times I ended up just winging it and trying to line the leaves up with the middle stitch. This meant I now had odd middle stitches along the way. So some had a gap of one and some a gap of 2 stitches to even it out. This pretty much did my head in. I am so fussy about such things but no amount of refitting was going to sort that out. But it did explain one persons decision to take out a whole leaf section and spread them out a little more. Sigh.

I am chalking it up to one of "those" projects. I have to wonder though when patterns are published like this, do they even test them first? Someone should be testing every size and if the pattern is not laid out completely perhaps it should be mentioned in the beginning of the pattern so at least you are aware that you will need to have a bit of experience to complete the pattern. I would have to say that this pattern would be so disappointing to a beginner knitter. It is so easy to start with and honestly you would have thought great pattern. I did. I have always been of the philosophy that if something is free don't complain. However, one still spends a lot of time an effort and of course the cost of the yarn. So pretty disappointing if you get this far and have to frog your work.

So why am I whinging? Why don't I just fix it already? Oh I am just in a whingy mood today. I was hoping to get this finished asap so I could work on my Winifred. I wanted to take this one on holidays with me and sure this is still possible. However, its frustrating me all the same. I hate rushing things, I don't like that I have to fiddle with the pattern every 2nd row and it still is not coming out the best. In all honesty I would probably rather pull back that pattern panel and re-write the whole thing but I don't have the time. So yeah......I seem to have lost the LOVE for this one.

So why am I sticking with it you may be wondering, well Winifred had a little mis-hap too....not her fault at all, and thankfully I had a stitch holder handy when it happened......

And of course both projects require the same size needle and I don't happen to have a 3rd one amongst my gazillion needles. At this point I have been ogling all those fancy expensive sets online but really cannot justify the money spending at this stage. Its nice to dream though right?

OK enough energy expended on the whinging... Time for this princess to suck it up and get on with the day. :-) I plan to torture my weary body with some extreme yoga, do a little house cleaning and then tackle this baby head on! I can do it! I can! I need those needles for Winifred!!!!!!!!  Only 17 more sleeps till holiday time. Woo Hoo!

Todays Mantra:  "Let if go...Let it go...." Ok nope thats just annoying..... "I can do it, the rest of the pattern comes naturally and easily to me, I finish it with joy! Yes I do!"

Blessed BE....

Have a beautiful day my friends.  Love and hugs to you. xoxoxxoox