"Read these instructions through first."

Doh.
I've been cruising along on the Honeybee Stole.

It's an old photo but it really doesn't look much more interesting yet
I've been staying right on track to finish by my self-imposed deadline. I've been knitting what I need to, and no more, so that I can work on other more satisfying projects. I'm almost finished with the second section, and today I scanned ahead to take a gander at the third and final section.

It turns out it isn't the final section.

Granted, the (newly discovered) section four is only 16 rows (per side), but that adds 12 days of knitting at the scheduled rate of 2.75 rows per day. Aack!

Also? While I thought I was being all smart starting both sides at the same time, I just read the last page and see that this wasn't what I was supposed to be doing. Instead of being a continuous patter from one side to the other, I'm going to have a row of stockinette grafting. Eh. I can live with that (though please don't remind me when I'm in the middle of grafting 101 stitches of laceweight).

There are lots of advantages to having patterns on the computer instead of printed out, but this is one downside: I'm just not going to sit down and read 10 pages of a pattern on the computer screen.

This has become something of a gripe with me about patterns I've been knitting: People are too wordy. The beauty of blogging is that you could blog all you want about a pattern, and keep some of that chatter out of the pattern itself.

I do enjoy reading about how a pattern came from idea to reality. I appreciate reading about some of the technical details - for example, learning why a particular series of increases or decreases creates the desired results. But usually I've already read that on the designer's blog before I decided to knit the project in the first place. I really wish the more wordy pattern writers would include a bare-bones one-page pattern at the end. Since my projects are often portable (if only from couch to bedside), I hate paging through 6 or 10 pages to get to the two lines of instructions I need for a particular step. Or if I'm on the second sock I don't need the elaborate explanation of why I'm doing things as written rather than some other way. In the Francie sock there is one page per step - one page for the leg patterning, one page for the stitch descriptions, etc. And oftentimes I need more than one page to get things done (i.e. a reminder of the stitch descriptions when I'm working the arch shaping). Ugh. Since this is my current "on the go" project, I have 5 tri-folded double-sided pages in my purse. The Jaywalker (Ravelry link) is better - only 3 pages - but it could certainly be trimmed to two pages to make it more earth-friendly. (what, you think I'm going to be monogomous while I knit the second Francie? Of course I'm starting a new pair.)

Making up the time for this has seriously cut into my sock knitting time. I'm only to the heel on the second Francie sock. I should be wearing them. Whine. Distract yourself with this little man: