Rookie Mistake Number 2

I was well past the cuff and into the thumb gusset of the Bobbie mittens by the very talented Julie Muehler when the nagging feeling that something wasn't right finally moved from the back of my brain to the front.

The text didn't match the chart. I had ignored that problem for many rows figuring it was my inability to read a chart. Then I completely lost track of which row I was on. After spending way too long trying to figure it out and wondering even more why what I was doing didn't seem to follow the chart, I decided to frog back.

Since I was back to the beginning of the gusset, I decided to think harder about this text chart mismatch. I concluded the chart had to be wrong. I was about to see if I could email the designer for clarification. This is how it would have gone:

Me: Hi, I'm working on this lovely pattern that you so painstakingly wrote and likely had vetted by several experienced knitters, but I think there's a problem with it.

Her: Oh? What would that be.

Me: Well, the text says to start with line two of the stitch pattern, but that's not what the chart shows.

Her: Really? Let me take a look. Okay, the chart shows that on row 34, you start with row two of the stitch pattern, just like the text says.

Me: No, the chart starts with Row 4.

Her: No, it doesn't. It very clearly shows that you start with a slip 1 with yarn in front.

Me: Yes, but that's row 4 of the stitch pattern

Her: Lady, I think you need to take some knitting lessons - maybe next time you should pay more attention to the stitch pattern.

Yes, there on the front page, it clearly says that row 2 of the stitch pattern is slip 1 with yarn in front. Row 4 is the reverse.

Thankfully, I did not make this call.

In fairness to me, the first part of the glove didn't follow the stitch pattern exactly. Still one of the basic rules of reading patterns is that if the text and chart don't match it is much more likely to be a user error than a pattern problem!