Bad Knitter!

OK, I just feel like whining. Here’s the story. I really like my LYS and the people who work there. The owner thinks I’m a bit of a flake because I don’t sit still very long, even during classes. I have a bad back for God’s sake! Result of a couple of slipped discs years ago. I just can’t sit on a hard chair without excruciating pain. One of the worker bees is nice enough to me, but my husband found her “aloof” when he went in to buy a Christmas gift for me. He found her not very helpful and felt put-off. You would think that a guy in a yarn shop would be coddled a bit; the proverbial cow in a china shop. I take classes there for a number of reasons: 1. to learn new techniques 2. because I want to support this new shop 3. to meet up with others who enjoy this as much as I do So what’s the problem? Just because you can do, doesn’t mean you can teach! I took a sock class last summer, and it was great! So was the felted vase class even though I was the only one in it. Then the Bobby Bear class and that was great too. So during the bear class we got to discussing how the upcoming bear sweater class and how the model sweater wasn’t going to fit Bobby. So the teacher said she was going to talk to the person who was going to teach the sweater class and have her modify the pattern to fit. It didn’t happen, so now I have a sweater knitted, but not put together since I have no bear to fit it! And I had found an error in the pattern, had emailed the owner, and proceeded with the sweater. The same person sold me a felted mitten pattern that had been used in a class that I didn’t get into. I should have been forewarned when she started rewriting the directions on a scrap of paper. Since both were store produced patterns why didn’t they get corrected and give us the new patterns? I’m not getting it! I really like this girl and the LYS but frustration set in even more when I went to sweater class yesterday. I picked up the pattern, this time a commercially produced pattern, and the yarn a couple of weeks ago. I decided to swatch. Then have much time on my hands being sick with this cold I started on the back and got carried away and finished it. Well! The teacher of this class didn’t seem to like that at all. Her first comment was “Maybe we’ll have to rip it back”. Then she pulls out her trusty ruler and tells me my gauge was off, that is should be 3 sts to the inch. I pointed to the pattern which says 4 sts to the inch. Somehow she couldn’t get that to work and was telling me I had 4 ¼. I pulled out my gauge marker and dang it – it was exactly 4! So she proceeds to tell me that maybe if she stretched it out a bit, or maybe because of the hand spun yarn… Next she is going to check the row gauge! Well that was right on too. So she gets the other 2 in the class started. A bit later she asks me how I added the new ball of yarn – did I add it at the beginning of a row? Well, yes I did. So a bit later, as I am working on the front she tells me that “we are going to have to rip back on the back of the sweater”. She doesn’t like the way the pattern tells you to join the shoulders; that she likes them knitted together. Well, I’m all for learning new techniques, but I had about had it by then. AND, get this, she is teaching the jacket class I am schedule to take in March. At the end of class yesterday, she told me “and don’t start that one before class”! Guess I was a bad girl…