Weekend Report: Knitshame Edition

As you might have noticed from the montage, Spring is finally here in Philadelphia. What’s even more exciting, Megan-Anne is finished with the MCATs! I am so excited to have my sister back instead of the drama-llama I told you about a couple weekends ago.

For those of you following her journey to becoming a doctor, she feels positive about the test, but won’t get her results back for another 1-2 months. Then, of course, she gets to start the grueling task of applying to med schools. For now, she has a brief respite and gets to have her life back. You’d think she’d be overjoyed at this turn of events, but then you wouldn’t be accounting for the intense knitshame she had over the weekend.

Before our respective lives got busy and we came up with the crazy idea of putting together a pattern book proposal (more on that another day), we both joined Geek Swap on Ravelry and are now participating in a Sherlock themed swap.

If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s when you swap items with an anonymous partner and receive items back. Swaps usually have minimum requirements like including a skein of nice yarn, handmade items, and snacks. It’s a lot of fun. And who doesn’t love receiving packages in the mail?

As my dear sister is wont to do, instead of knitting someone else’s pattern or designing something simple since we’re busy, she decided that now was a great time to create something really complicated. And while her idea was arguably super boss, she wouldn’t come to terms with how certain aspects of it just wasn’t working.

The beading was making the purse too heavy, so she bought boning to make it keep its shape.

Halfway up the panel, the beading was even heavier, so she bought plastic mesh to go along with the boning.

With only two rows left in the panel, she looked at me and said, “This purse is going to weigh 10 pounds between the beads and all this stuff I have to put in it. Even then, I’m not sure it’ll keep its shape.” She made a frowny face at me and I responded by making my I-told-you-so-but-I’m-not-going-to-say-it face.

After spending the majority of the weekend hung over (we might have celebrated a little too hard Friday night) and watching her struggle with this design, it was almost a relief to have her look at me and say, “It’s knitshame, isn’t it?”

I’m just as guilty as Megan-Anne when it comes to getting fixated on how the end product should look. We try so hard to make it happen that we oftentimes refuse to consider other options. Options, which might actually be more visibly pleasing or at least easier to make.

I’m not sure if this is pure Indiana-born stubbornness on our parts or if it’s something every designer and knitter/crocheter adjusting a pattern experiences. If you’ve had trouble letting go of a certain design element, blog about it and link back to this page or tell us about it in the comments. We’d love to hear your stories.

~ Jac
“If she falls in a lake holding this bag, she’ll sink to the bottom!”