A Rave / A Rant

As I have mentioned, multiple times, I belong to the Pine Ridge Elders group on Yahoo (best group on the Interwebs). Last night it was mentioned that a certain American yarn company would give you FREE yarn if you wrote to them and told them you would be using their yarn for charitable knitting / crocheting. I immediately thought, "Yeah, right." Then someone else posted how this company had indeed sent them a box of yarn with 36 small skeins in it. "This was probably years ago," I thought, "before the Great Recession." Someone else chimed in with a "Yeah, I got yarn last year." Along with that, they posted the email address of the person to contact for your FREE YARN.

I decided to set my cynical side aside and write to this magical person. Sure enough, there was a reply in my Inbox this morning saying she would get a box sent to me. I am amazed. We're talking quality 100% wool yarn here. From a brand you would know instantly if I told you what it was. But I'm not going to tell you. Not because I'm a poopynose but because I don't want this poor woman's email address to show up on Ravelry tomorrow under a post titled "Free Yarn Baby!".

What I will do though, because I'm a big believer in knitting for charity, is give you that address if you send me an email telling me who you're knitting for and I can somehow verify that. Like you belong to a Ravelry group or you've written about it on your blog. My email address is Sakkasie@hotmail.com if you feel so inclined.

Rant time! This is the scarf that I was struggling with last Friday night. Struggling because (a) the instructions weren't very clear and (b) there were errors in the pattern. Now you're probably saying to yourself, "Well hell April, you get what you pay for when you use a free pattern." However, this was not a free pattern, this was a pay for it pattern. I paid money for a pattern in which you alternated between 2 different rows. Two rows. Errors. WTF? How is this possible? Then tonight I tried to start another pattern and the number of stitches to cast on was wrong. I ripped the damn thing out twice before I went to Ravelry and checked. Multiple people who had made this pattern had pointed out that there was an error in the cast on. Has the pattern writer updated her pattern? No.

Now I will admit that I do seem to have some kind of track record for finding patterns with errors in them. But twice in ONE week? Is this some new trend in pattern writing? Are these like, puzzle patterns? Maybe they figure you'll get more entertainment value out of their patterns if you spend the first two hours trying to figure out what the hell it is you're supposed to do.

So, because I'm so ticked off about all of this, I will be posting the instructions for the scarf pictured above this weekend. I've had to rework the pattern (all four lines of it) to the point where this is now MY scarf. And I'm going to post it FOR FREE. For free, you sucky pattern writers! Take that.