Oh the Stupid

I read the Knitty forums (which they, in a wincing excess of twee, insist on calling the "coffeeshop") and occasionally I am struck by the lack of mastery some of the folks there demonstrate.  I mean, yes, there are the normal number of newbies who don't bother to google "yarn over" before posting, but they're newbies and can be forgiven for not knowing about whatever term they're confused by (though not for neglecting to google).  But every once in a while there's someone who purportedly knows what sie's doing and still manages to be a total moron.

Such is the woman who hates to cast on--not, I hasten to add, because she hates to cast on, but because of the way she went about avoiding it (and for the fact that her post is sprinkled with about twenty smilies of various sorts).  She had to CO like 250 stitches, knit a few rows, and then realized she wasn't getting gauge; her swatch had lied.  Sucks.  So she ripped back to the CO, but since she was using a yarn with some memory¹ the CO loops were still there and, since she hates to cast on, she just picked them all up on the theory that having the CO row be in the wrong gauge wouldn't really matter over the course of the sweater.  Also cool.  Where it gets weird is this: she picked up the loops with the wrong stitch mount for her, that is (most likely) the way my stitches are normally mounted since I'm a combined knitter: leading leg behind the needle.  And instead of just knitting the first row "through the back"--or even through the front, for one row of twisted stitches no one would have been able to see because they were right up against the CO--she remounted all 250 before beginning to knit.

What the hell?  How can you claim to be an experienced knitter (this was, IIRC, posted in the "Experience Knitter's Venting Space") and lack a skill so utterly basic?  It's not like knitting is rocket science, for God's sake.  Five-year-olds can do it, and can grasp the concept of variant stitch mount.  And no one's posting anything saying, dude, why didn't you just...?  Instead they're all being gushy about how hard-done-by she is, for having to do all that extra work.  What part of "the extra work was totally unnecessary" is slipping by you guys?

1: One of the reasons I love Autumn Rose is that a needle slipping out of the stitches, not uncommon with my slippery metal KP dpns, is a minor inconvenience as the stitches obediently sit there waiting to be picked up.  Loves me some Shetland Spindrift.

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