Friday 14 September 2007

Can I lend you a hand?

Remember me ranting about how much I hate knitting mittens? Okay maybe I wasn't exactly ranting on my blog, but I was having a major rant fest in my head. I've finished the the wretched things and am quite pleased with how they turned out.

They needed to be trigger mitts so instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I found a pattern. Problem is, I got the pattern from a book notorious for errors. Okay so I've only found one other pattern in this book with an error. But since this pattern's error was even screwier than the other....I have to worry about the lack of technical editing. The sizing was WAY too wide across the palm and I don't know about you but my index finder is not longer than the rest of my fingers. Obviously the mitts in the book were meant for some kind of mutant.

I hate knitting mittens. But having to rip back and re knit mittens because I tried one on DH and it was pathetically too big to the point of being laughable.....is enough to drive me around the bend. I frogged back to the cuff, as it was the only thing that fit, and started again. Using DH's hand as a model, I ended up with the perfect trigger mitt. I even got feed store guy to try them on twice during the knitting process to make sure of the fit. He is happy with them.

I've been to a crafter's seminar where the facilitator told us that if you change 5 things than you are able to claim the work as your own. I had to change far more than 5 things on this pattern to make it work. DH suggested that I can now write up the pattern and sell it without any fear of copy write infringement. Don't know about that one.

DH likes the mitts but he knows better than to ask for a pair.

Until next time
Yours in Yarn
The Fibreholic

5 comments:

Taphophile said...

Well that's that ordeal done with. What a stupid pattern.

The mitts are exactly like the ones the Happy Spider spotted in an episode of Hornblower.

Ambaa said...

I always like to err on the side of caution when copywrite is involved.

Georgie said...

Very interesting pattern - shame the original was such a dud. Boo hiss to crappy technical editing.

Sounds like you changed it "subtantially" - enough to make it your own? Interesting to find out.

TinkingBell said...

I was going to mention the Hornblower mitts too - so maybe they weren't mutants - maybe they were triggers! Aren't you glad that's finished?

MadMad said...

I once had the designer person call me (I called the company to ask about a possible pattern typo), and she ACTUALLY SAID: Oh, just forget about making that sweater,honey. It was such a pain! She went on to tell me it was actually just pinned shut behind the model because they couldn't make it work. Can you freakin' believe it? I'm sorry your mitten pattern was a dud, too. But yours came out looking great! (And phew - they're done with, right?)