kyarns: Errata - a timesaver in the end

Today in the shop, a woman asked for help calculating yardage for a great sweater in the Men in Knits book, by Tara Jon Manning. For a men's medium, it was calling for 4 skeins of yarn, at 800 yards each. That's 3,200 yards! We immediately knew something was wrong.

So I logged onto interweave.com and checked out the book corrections. Sure enough, that pattern had a correction - it meant to call for 4 skeins of yarn, at 400 yards each. Now that's more like it.

If something seems wacky to you, or a stitch count isn't quite working out, etc. take action and check to see if there's an errata out there! These patterns and books are usually rushed through to being printed. The authors and editors are human. Mistakes happen. Things get left out. And when they realize there's a problem, the publisher usually puts out an "errata", a sheet with the pattern corrections. These can be obtained on websites, or by calling the publisher.

The sweater I am making, the Anais, also had an errata. Which we had printed out, from Berroco's website, and nicely stapled into all of the pattern books, including my own. But did I check? Nope! So in my last post, where I mentioned that all sizes of this sweater only took 4 skeins of Ultra Alpaca Light - well, that's not quite right! I mean REALLY, Jill. I should have figured that out! But what really clued me in, was when I started knitting on Saturday evening, and it called for several needle sizes. It had me cast on with the smallest needle size for the ribbing - and then it didn't mention changing to another size. I skimmed through the pattern, and it actually never calls for the next size up needle, yet it was listed as one I needed. So, I turned to the errata, nicely stapled in the front of my book, and yep, there were a couple of corrections for that sweater.

So, word to the wise! There are mistakes in many patterns out there. We know about some of them, but there's no way we can know about all of them. Be proactive. Do a little googling of your pattern or book to see if there are any erratas out there before you start. You'll be glad you did.

Monday and Tuesday the girls come to the shop to hang out after school. It's only for a couple of hours, and they can have a snack and get their homework finished. Then they read quietly. I'm so glad they love to read... and that we have a library right out back so we can always get new books. Today it's feeling really fall-like, and so Helen is snuggling up in our new Comfort afghan. Kim just finished it and brought it in today. It is SO soft and cozy. Fun to knit too. I will be putting that up online soon, with a number of different color options.