Don’t get tripped up because you didn’t read ahead. We all get excited when we think we’ve gotten the hang of our pattern and just carry on like we know what we’re doing. Then all of a sudden, things don’t add up or you’ve messed up a whole section of your work. Here are my top tips to stick with your pattern, throughout your project.
1. Read the whole thing, before you start
That’s right, you read that correctly. Read the whole pattern BEFORE you even pick up your yarn. I find that this gives me a good sense of the landmarks of the pattern and the different sections of the work. This makes it easier so that when you come to a section of the pattern, you already have a sense of what the function of this part of the pattern is in the whole of the piece you are making.
2. Context
When you think it’s time to move on to the next step and you are referring to your pattern, always get the context for that next step. What I mean here is, review the part that you’ve just done and make sure that you are actually ready to move on. This makes it way easier to fix any errors that might have come up. It is way better than finding an error that you made 50 rows ago. Also, read ahead a little bit too. That way you can remind yourself of what still needs to be completed. It also helps to make sure that you haven’t gotten lost in your pattern and aren’t accidentally reading a similar but completely different section.
3.Keep the pattern close by
When I am nearing the end of my work, I always get too excited. I end up not referring back to my pattern frequently enough, and miss something simple like switching to a smaller needle size for the ribbed edge. Always keep your pattern close by and refer to it often, even when you are feeling sure of what you are doing. This will help prevent mistakes from happening.
Hopefully you could learn a few things from my mistakes. We buy patterns for things because we want to make those beautiful items. Might as well get your money’s worth and actually follow along.
5 thoughts on “Stick to your Pattern”
Yes!! I have found this to be very true!! Patterns should be read thru several times before you actually work a section—then you will know what to expect and know to double check your work before moving on to the next section! Great tips!!
Exactly stormi! Thanks for leaving me a comment:)
Guilty of not doing this. Hence I tend to unravel a lot.!
I’m going to make sure I follow this advice for my next project.
Amazing! Thanks for taking your time to read it 🙂
I will knit a test sample of the pattern first, so at least I will gain experience with knitting it. Sometimes it happens that the template is different from the pattern in the picture, so I can adjust the pattern. This is especially true for knitting in the round.