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Most patterns are boring - 2026-05-07
You heard me right, and I stand by it. This is not to say that patterns are bad. It's just that I find the vast majority of them deeply dull.
I feel like there's three main uses of a pattern:
- You do not know how to make an object that shape
- You want someone to do all the math and figuring out for you
- The pattern is doing something truly novel
Only the last of these is actually interesting to me anymore.
For the first one, I feel like this is most useful when you are a newer knitter, or you are making something totally out of your realm of experience. You don't know how to make this shape, the pattern shows you, and you probably learn something from following it. But I also feel like, once you've made a few things of that type, do you really need yet another pattern for it? Like, the internet is full of stockinette raglan sweaters. The only difference between them is the yarn and gauge used, sometimes they add color patterning, and what specific neckline they go with. They all basically look identical to me, as someone who just knows how to knit a raglan sweater from measurements. And the longer you knit, the more things you probably just know how to make, and the first reason to follow a pattern becomes less and less common. (I am ragging on raglan sweater patterns, a bit, because I think they're just in fashion right now. I swear every other new pattern I see for a sweater is a top down, in the round, raglan that has at most a bit of lace or color detail)
I say "probably" just know how to knit because I'm sitting here remembering when I was in college. Me and my sister had showed up to a knit knight at a semi local yarn store. All the people there were at least old enough to be our parents. Most of them seemed to have been knitting for quite a while, and a lot of them were participating in a knit-a-long for some sweater. And yet these same people seemed impressed by my knitting a blanket without a pattern. A blanket, mind you, that was just a rectangle with a very simple knit purl pattern on it. And, man, I dunno. This kinda baffled me at the time. Even as a brand new knitter, at least once I had passed the "mysteriously gain and lose stitches" phase of learning, I absolutely could have knit a rectangle without a pattern. My mother said they were probably just being nice. I have my doubts. Anyway, I'm not disparaging these knitters. REALLY, I promise. But it's a reminder that different people's brains work differently and I think there genuinely are people who just never learn to work outside a pattern.
Anyway, back to the point. The second reason one might follow a pattern is because you would like someone to do "all the fun stuff" for you. Quotes because I know not everyone likes math or tinkering. I do, though. But sometimes it's necessary to let someone do it for you! Example, last christmas, I knit hats for my brothers-in-law. For the one, I was using a yarn I was familiar with, and I semi winged the design using a crown I had made up back near the end of college. But for the second one, I was using a much lighter weight yarn that I hadn't worked with before. I absolutely COULD have done the math and came up with a perfectly good hat entirely on my own, because hat construction is genuinely simple. But I was in a time crunch and just needed a hat that would fit, correctly, first try. So I found a pattern.
Or another example, I am currently in the process of crocheting a hat to replicate one seen in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. For this, I needed a flower square. Again, I probably could have freehanded a flower square, but I'm already doing the figuring out for the rest of the hat. So I found a nice looking one online and am using that as my starting point. Admittedly, I've already tweaked the design of the square a couple times and probably will be doing moreso later, but starting with an existing pattern saved me time.
But of course, when you're following a pattern purely to save time on doing the math, it's genuinely boring. Utterly dull, unless it's a very small item. The knit/crochet equivelant of using a coloring book, or doing a paint by number. Some people find that relaxing. I do not. At some point I want to write an entry about the process vs product dichotemy, and propose a third option which is neither. But this post is already getting long, so that's a problem for another day.
The last option is novel construction. This is my favorite reason and the only time I ever find myself actually excited about the prospect of looking at a pattern. It is also, unfortunately, exeedingly rare. There's only so many ways you can shape a hat, or a sweater, or a sock, or a teddy bear and still have it look like the thing it's supposed to be. And most designers are more interested in making a coherent pattern that fulfills reasons 1 and 2.
I'm talking mostly about knitting here, even though I crochet as well, in part because I have less experience making specific shapes in crochet and am more likely to grab a pattern, but also because what inspired this post was me browsing the Hot Right Now search on Ravelry, which is 99% knitting right now. Every time I go look at new and/or popular patterns, I inevitably come away disappointed. I am looking for new ideas and things to get the imagination going, and find nothing.
Right now, looking at the page, I would say the vast majority of what's listed are extremely basic items. Lots of stockinette and simple shaping. A lot of sweaters, for some reason. At least half the sweaters are stockinette raglans. There's one sweater that I'm pretty sure is just two rectangles sewn together, and I can only assume the pretty picture is main reason why people are interested. And of course, the ever popular "oversized round yoke sweater" where the only reason I'd want the pattern is to use the lace in something else.
There are a couple items where, if I wanted to make them, I would probably follow the pattern. Mostly shawl type items where there's a lot of stitch patterning interacting with shaping, and that's a great use case for letting someone else do that math for you. But they're not my style, so not really worth looking deeper.
And then there's exactly ONE item that looks to have an interesting enough construction to actually be curious about. A jacket, that looks to be made modularly. Simple in overall shape, but it's at least interesting how they get there. It's also a pattern that costs as much as a book of knitting patterns, so I probably will not be purchasing it. But it's pretty rare that I see something that makes me go "huh, interesting" so props on that.
Anyway, this post has gotten long and I've definitely lost the thread somewhere. But that's why I've added a blog to the website, instead of making this part of a dedicated Section™. This is me attempting to clarify my thoughts, and give context for why I sometimes have to swallow my frustration online. And maybe reminding myself that just becase I look at a picture and see a simple shape, it doesn't mean everyone does.