We're not gonna take it - posted at 11:27

Ok, knitting designers, we need to talk. Seriously.

We have a wonderful craft at our finger (needle?) tips. It is infinitely flexible, our creativity limited by only a few things, such as our ability to fund our stashes (but that's about it). We have the ability to make rectangles or tubes, or even a rectangle and a tube, all in one piece! We are not constrained the way many other fabric-based crafts are - we can create shaping and curves and make prettymuch whatever the bloody hell we want to. We have the power to make entire garments without sewing a single stitch.

Then why, why, WHY do you insist on writing patterns that are made flat and then sewn together??? I thought the WHOLE POINT of being able to make tubes is to avoid sewing things up! There is absolutely no reason to do it.

Why why WHY do you make patterns from the bottom up, making it impossible to try on for fit as you go??? This has got to be the biggest blunder ever in the knitting world. Again, this marvelous craft gives us many gifts, and one of them is the ability to custom-fit garments as we make them! Why why WHY do you eschew this gift??? Making things flat from the bottom up is TOXIC. How is it any different from buying something off the rack at a department store? All you've done is essentially made something that you had very little power to custom-make to your measurements to insure the fit you want.

Take the sleeve, for example. If I make a sleeve to go on a sweater the way that 95% of the available patterns do, then I'm going to start at the wrist, knit flat (thus inviting in the Dread Pirate Purling) and go up to the shoulder. Two problems: What if it's too short? Then I'm hosed. I have to unravel the entire bloody sleeve to add in extra inches. Secondly, last time I checked, an ARM is ROUND - why not knit the sleeve in the round??? Why bring in the extra work of purling and then seaming???

Knitting publishers, you are missing a huge market by favoring "traditionally" (aka convoluted) constructed garments. You are alienating Process Knitters who hate purling, who hate seaming. You are jettisoning the best parts of our craft by taking away the power to easily try on as we go and forgoing the ability to easily add or subtract length from a garment. It may take a tad bit more study to learn how to knit these garments, but isn't it worth it???

Designers like Barbara Walker, Wendy Bernard, Stephanie Japel, and Diane Soucy, I salute you! You have put the full power of knitting back into our hands and onto our needles and enabled us to knit like the craft originally intended!

And knitters, it's time to take back our craft. Let designers and publishers know that we are knitters, not seamstresses! Tell them that we embrace a challenge and want to learn new construction methods! Yell from the mountaintops that we are no longer going to cripple our craft or eschew the best that the yarn and needles have to offer! And if we all yell loudly enough, perhaps, just perhaps, they'll hear us and we can affect our own Knitter's Revolution and we can get back to the best of the heart that the needles offer us.

Marissa commented:

I made *one* sweater flat. And the back was about 3 inches longer than the front. I frogged the whole thing, tossed the DK yarn back into my stash, and haven't touched it since.

Jitterbean Girl commented:

I think we all have similar I-knit-a-sweater-flat horror stories. The one that I knit flat was a total disaster and I would have frogged it but it had taken me three months to make and it was a birthday present for my Mom, so she was under contract to like it. That's the nice thing about Moms - she'll understand that it is a token of love, even if it's ugly. I'm just thankful that there are more and more in-the-round sweater patterns available and that books like Custom Knits are out there so that I can re-write stubborn flat patterns.

Sabrina commented:

I hear that. I love knitting (I don't even mind purling) but I HATE finishing with a passion. Two years ago I knit a hoodie for my niece. It's still in 6 pieces because I hate seaming with the fire of a thousand suns. If I wanted to sew crap together, I'd learn to sew.

Seaming is the devil!