Electronic patterns - you can't buy just one

12.08.2008

Right now buying patterns off the net is kind of like sitting down with a pint of Haagen-Dazs. You tell yourself you're only going to have a little..... but one thing leads to another and soon your spoon is making that thud sound as it hits the cardboard bottom. Or in the case of patterns the sound might be cha ching as money flies out of your checking account.

Anyone else having this problem right now? I'd use the excuse that this pattern buying is to take the edge off of Christmas knitting, except that I'm not doing any. Will the excuse that my current project is in the vast amount of stockinette stage work?
I can hear some of you generous knitters saying, "It's OK, you're just lining up some future projects." Thank you generous knitters and you'd be right to if something new and shiny didn't always come along.

It seems that once a pattern has been bought there is a invisible timer ticking down. If I don't get the project on the needles before that time has expired the pattern will never get knit. Fair Enough and Coraline were both cast on within two weeks of purchase and finished. The two patterns Kingscot and Vivian bought from the twist collective in November, quickly approaching their knitting expiration date. The chic knits pattern Twist bought last year..... that has a snowballs chance in hell of ever getting knitted.  

What causes this? I still think these patterns are beautiful and would love to wear the completed sweaters.  I just don't want to knit them anymore. Is it a lack of moral fiber, maybe Knitters ADD?  Should I create a personal rule that patterns purchased need to be knitted before willy nilly spending more money on Brooklyn Tweed's latest lace project. Well maybe that's a special case..... who can resist his photographic charms. But you know what I mean!

So anyway how about a picture of something that did get on the needles in time.  Here's the yoke of Ophicleide designed by Kamicha over on ravelry.  Her project page is always drool worthy, go look go look now!  Enough of us must have drooled over this sweater that she wrote up a pattern.  Thank god because I've been trying to guess the stitch patterns and would have been totally off. 
The start of this project was a little shaky because of poor instruction reading by me.  When you start knitting the patterned yoke the first stitch on either side is an edge stitch and does not show in the chart.  If you miss reading this in the instructions (Oh it's there alright) your stitch count gets pretty funky.  Once that mistake was figured out I started slipping the stitches with the yarn on the wrong side. Generally just stupid stuff that will be blamed on trying to talk to people and read directions at the same time.  Kindergardeners banging on pianos also tend to be distracting, but these are the hazards of knitting during Thanksgiving. 

Now if you please excuse me I must try to resist buying the new Shetland Trader beret Breiwick.  Or maybe Selbu Modern instead.  All heck let's just get both.

2 comments:

  1. This is sounding all too familiar...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm with you. I've cast on for 3 different socks just to break up the boredom of a pile of fingerless gloves.

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