If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Who hasn’t heard that at least once in their life time? If you knit (or crochet, or cook or pretty much try anything new) get ready to hear it a LOT. Get ready to constantly try something new only to have varying degrees of success. I’m not telling you this to make you feel defeated. I’m being straight with you.
Because life is about getting back up again after you took that big fall.
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Seriously, you can’t let something that finishes out to less than perfection stop you. If you do, then you’ll never get anywhere. And that would be a shame. There’s a whole lot of learning and experience that happens when we try stuff out and make a mess. We learn what works, and maybe more importantly what doesn’t! That’s HUGE.
If I had let one bad knit stop me, I wouldn’t be here talking with you about this today. If you missed the post about my first knit, you might want to check that one out. I’ll wait.
Yeah, it’s seriously the worst thing I’ve ever seen. And that’s ok!! I allowed myself to make a mess and just be free with the process. In the end, it taught me about the best way to teach other people how to start knitting AND be successful. I have my own philosophy on how best to teach people, and pretty soon we’ll be getting into that. But not today.
Today I’m sharing some of my knitting fails. I’m sharing them, because people seem to think that someone like me never messes stuff up. Or never makes a mistake. Or never has trouble with a new pattern. Well. Whatever. That certainly isn’t true!
Knitting is something that can be worked on for a lifetime.
It’s like playing music. You can continue improving your skills and learning new things for your entire life. I think that’s what makes it so amazing. Once you get into it, you start to see how vast an experience it can be. And for people who are curious and who are life long learners, this is nothing short of nirvana when it comes to having a hobby.
First up we have a free pattern I found on Pinterest last Christmas. It was so cute, and I could not resist trying it out. I wanted to knit it just as written. It seemed like it would be too big, but I decided to just follow the instructions to see what would happen. And here it is….
Um yeah. The idea of this hat is so cute, but it was not written to compensate for negative ease, which means it’s got no stretch. You have to incorporate some negative ease into your hat or this is what it’s going to do.
The teenager thought it was hysterical. She couldn’t stop laughing when I had her put it on.
“Miss Patty, did you really make this?”
“Yes I did.”
Stare of utter disbelief followed by huge eye roll.
We’re not even gonna talk about the messy looking crown decreases. It was supposed to come out like a stocking cap. It didn’t.
I have a lot of trouble with free patterns. They are pretty much never tech edited or tested and they just about never work. Even though I didn’t pay for it, I spent a lot of my time and my materials on making the piece. I’ll try this out again next year, but I’m going to rewrite it so it fits and it gives me the stocking cap top I wanted. It’s a cute idea, but it just didn’t work.
From this knitting fail, I learned to always trust my own gauge and my own formula for introducing negative ease for hats that actually fit!
The problem of disappointing knits does not belong solely to free patterns. Oh no, my pretty. Oh no. I paid the most I’ve ever paid for a single pattern download for this infinity cowl. And this is what I got. The worst $9 I ever spent.
Rolls are great with Cinnamon, but notsomuch for infinity scarves.
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I should have known this would be a problematic knit. It’s just about all stockinette, and stockinette always rolls up on itself. Always. It’s the nature of the fabric. But I loved the pattern pictures SO MUCH. I wanted it to work. It’s like that bad relationship we’ve all had. I don’t care how cute the guy is, if he’s an ass it’s never going to end well.
Sometimes no matter how hard you try, you just can't make it work. Time to move on.
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Granted, I substituted yarn. I wanted to get the hang of it before using the expensive stock. I knitted this piece 3 times in different sizes and in different craft store yarn, and got the same disappointing results every time. So I didn’t want to use my expensive yarn on something that was going to turn out like this.
And that yarn is still sitting in unused hanks in my stash. I want to use it, but haven’t gotten around to anything for it yet. It definitely won’t be on this piece.
You can see how cool this looks when she stretches it out so it’s straight. Who wants to walk around all day holding their knitting straight?
And this leads us to the last knitting fail for today, which is a mess of my own making. I wanted to design my own simple pom pom beanie and this is what I got. Again. A HUGE hat. I didn’t understand how to use gauge and how to measure for a hat that would actually fit.
So this is what I got. It might fit one of those football players with all those long dreadlocks, but I don’t think those are the kind of men who will go for a pink pom pom. Just guessing here.
Yeah. So I need to go back to this basic design and knit it to measurements and with proper adjustments for fit. And then show it to you.
I have a pattern in a book I bought from Hannah Fetig with her basic hat pattern. I want to actually sit with that and spend a little time. She gets pretty in depth in the book on how to make a basic hat. It’s pretty much what I’m telling you here, but I want to actually knit from her pattern to see what I get (and what else I can learn). She does it in 3 different weights of yarn, and I’d like to see how that finishes out in the end.
The crown decreases are their own special thing to get right. It does require a little math, and it definitely requires some thinking ahead to come up with a successful hat pattern.
But with a little bit of planning, and by not being afraid to experiment, I learned the skills I used to make this selection of beautifully finished hats. I learned the importance of having patterns edited and tested. And I worked out the skill set to be able to teach you how to do it, too. The patterns are available in my etsy shop or on Ravelry. I think you’ll definitely enjoy these, and get good results!
Patty McGuire is a knitter who designs beginner knitting patterns. Video tutorials and online classes are currently in the works. She resides in the resort city of Virginia Beach where she has a small container garden and knits for her much loved Golden Retriever, Willie. She photographs and writes all the content on this blog (including this byline which seems weird because I’m writing about myself in 3rd person, but people like this sort of thing so I’m including it.)