Making an Ass Of You And Me (in Knitting)

Okay, short rant courtesy of recent Hat Attack experiences.

I am getting really, really sick of knitting help sites that assume things, especially when they don't state the assumptions. The entire point of these sites is to help people who don't know how to do a particular technique, and they are largely frequented by knitters who are new enough to the craft that they are unlikely to catch the assumptions. Gah!

The particular example that currently has me pulling at my hair is the SSP decrease and knittinghelp.com, which is usually my go-to site for help when someone needs help with a technique, as the videos and descriptions are incredibly clear and concise. I still like them, but I suppose I should have vetted this particular technique before people started going there, as they have one major assumption that does not apply in my particular design.

According to knittinghelp.com, you can only do a SSP decrease on the wrong side of the work. Assuming you are working stockinette or otherwise want the purl bump on the wrong side of the work, that's sort of true. However, in this case, I wanted the purl bump on the right side of the work. It is helping to keep the ribbing pattern underway during the decreases.

Now I have people getting very confused and probably assuming that I am out of my furry little mind because I am asking for an "impossible" decrease, and doing all sorts of odd modifications because a site has an unspoken assumption that you want purl bumps on the back, not the front of the work. :sigh:

Another example, which is nearly universal, is the use of the terms "front" and "back" to refer to sides of the stitches on the needles, without actually explaining these terms. The front of the stitch is the side that once you work it will end up facing you. The back is the side that will end up facing away from you once the stitch is worked. Alert readers will notice that it is possible to have the front of the stitch facing left or right.

Unfortunately, this is not usually mentioned to new knitters, and they are simply told that the left side of a stitch is the "front" and the right side is the "back", and this inaccurate description is used when explaining increases, decreases, and so on. It's not usually a problem in normal knitting, but as they get into lace, patterned decreases, and other even slightly complicated knitting, it makes explaining things much more difficult.

To make it even more fun, almost all sites assume that you are knitting Western style, even though there are huge populations of knitters that work Combination, Eastern, or other "exotic" styles. Many of these people have never even heard of Western knitting. If you use one of these styles, you have a good chance of the stitches facing the other direction on the needle, which makes correct usage of "front" and "back" even more important.

*****

Okay, I have been successfully stirred into action by aggravation. My next entry will be a nice, long list of how to perform various increases and decreases, using terminology that actually takes into account how your stitches lay on the needle beforehand and doesn't use terms that can mean more than one thing depending on how they are used.

Rant over, I feel better now.