It's lovely but...

The first thing I want to say today is that I took the right colour this time.  

Isn't that pretty?  

And yet I can hardly stand to look at it this morning.  I did everything right and yet, it is NOT doing what it has to do to acheive the lovely pattern.

I am not even finding it much consolation that I didn't do anything wrong.  Seriously.  What I am is madder than a wet hornet, so mad that I will show you the secret sauce of the pattern.  I normally don't want to do that.  I believe that a copyright holder has the right to earn their money back, particularly in knitting, when it is so often one person in a very small business.  I am a firm believer in purchasing and paying the designers for their smarts and their inspiration.  This is different.

See chart.  See chart and run with it.  See chart and do set up row number one exactly like it said

and be utterly unable to do row two.  I tried to do row two.  Several times.  The chart shows the double decreases stacking neatly, but on my knitting, they most assuredly did not.  Not even close.  Thankfully, I learned to read my knitting long ago, and I knew there was a fatal flaw somewhere before I got past the first repeat on row two.  I sarted thinking about the many decreases.  What had sort of sat in the back of my mind became a roar.  'Gosh there are a lot of decreases in this thing',  I thought.

Four stitches are decreased in between each pattern repeat, (a left leaning decrease a double decrease in the center and a right leaning decrease) forming a lovely clear column.  It gets a litte fancy because you do a different double decrease every second row so that on the finished work, you have this delicate interwoven edge to the lace motifs.  Then, according to the charts, there are a further twelve, count it, twelve, in the rows of plain knitting.  The column of decreasing across the pattern gives you 16 stitches decreased plus the twelve that are in the body of the lace totals to a magnificent twenty-eight decreases from a 12 stitch cast on edge.  I  didn't get as far as the math for the whole total last night.  All I did was count the decreases the chart shows in non increase rows to know that the charts were fundamentally wrong.  

What you have here is a sample of an experienced knitter but inexperienced chart writer and non chart knitter writing the chart.  I said some very unkind words last night.  Names were said and there may have been shouting to the point that the landlord wondered what was going on.  And yet, it is really one of those no fault things that will happen when you are faced with something you hadn't ever seen before.  I can even hear the logic in the chart writers head. 'what did you do with all the missing stitches? This chart is twelve wide. I have to take them out'. There is a logic to it of a sort and the question still pops up on forums, 'Where did the stitches from the blank squares go?'

This is in a book and it is an old book, originally published in 1992, I think, and will serve as a bit of a warning, that things were not so clear as the conventions in general use today.  Specifically I mean charts.  Charts were not used much in the 80's and 90's.  Charts and standard charting really came into its own with the knitting innovations that happened with the internet and the rise of social sites like Ravelry where people could discuss such things and pattern writers could finally get feedback on their charts from the average knitter.  You still get charts coming from old sources and there still are charts that use different notation, but knitters are so much more aware of these now that it seldom is a problem.

I can't help but wonder if the chart above shows why there are still knitters who say they cannot do charts.  If you bumped into this chart without understanding charts or having ever worked on charts before, you would feel this way too.

This is an older book.  Luckily it has words for the patterns.

Not all the rows are shown here, to be sure, but enough that a canny knitter could sort out the design for themselves if they were wont to.  I've only shown you enough of the written pattern to help you understand the full extent of what faces me today.  Read row one carefully.  Compare it to the charts.  Read row one again.

Yeah.  I have to take out that lovely row one again and redo everything, right back to and including my initial count of how many stitches I need so the pattern repeats work down the side of the shawl.  I will do it too but not right now.  I love this yarn that much and I love the idea of this shawl that much, but right now, at this moment I am not going to knit. Later. While I watch a dark murder mystery.  And people wonder why I watch murder mysteries.  Hah.

Right now I am going to do some baking and then I am going to eat some.  With coffee.

Popping in to say:  Conquered.  maybe.  Row one anyway.