30 Day Knitting Challenge Day 15: What was your least favorite pattern and why?

Oh dear; I hate to publicly dis anyone, especially someone’s creative endeavor, so I’m just not going to name the project or pattern. I needed a special pattern for some hand spun and decided this free lace shawl pattern would be perfect. I started the pattern a frustrating 3 times before understanding the various charts and comprehending that there was a mistake in the originals. I promptly recharted it using Adobe Illustrator (my preferred charting software) so it would be correct, understandable, and so it would fit in my chart keeper. The 4th time I started it, with my new charts, it went swimmingly and it was an enjoyable knit after that.

Now, this was a free pattern and while the pattern notes instruct the knitter to read the original blog posts (I did after the 1st or 2nd cast on) and mention a yahoo support group for the pattern (I avoid yahoo when I can – it’s clunky and there are more elegant solutions for pattern support, like Ravelry groups or really anything else except maybe MySpace), I thought future knitters of this pattern would appreciate my charts. They very well may have, but the designer asked me to remove them from Flickr & Ravelry (back in the day before you could upload photos directly to Ravelry). Other knitters before me had created their own charts and, ignoring the mistakes in the original, she put all these redone charts down to “people preferring their own way of charting lace.” She also didn’t want to get bogged down providing support for for a free pattern. Although I asked once more for her to update the charts (with any correct chart, not just mine), in the end, I respected her request and removed my charts from public view.

The end result for me is that I won’t be taking a chance on any of this designer’s paid designs. Sure, you could make the case that designers put less into free designs and sure, I understand not wanting to support a free pattern when you’ve got a stable of paid patterns to look after. But I also judge a designer on the content of their patterns, free or paid. Were I to offer free patterns, as I’ve contemplated doing in the past, I would treat them as advertising for my other designs and hope that if people like the free one, they might try a paid design.

Anyway, there’s no way I’m going to gamble money (granted, not very much money) on one of this designer’s paid patterns based on the quality of this free pattern and her refusal to acknowledge or fix the problems in it.