Menagerie of My Pet Peeves. Traditional instructions for armholes and sleeve caps.

First of all – I have to confess.
I do plea guilty of the crime of writing bad instructions.

Because: this is how everybody does it; this is how patterns have always been written; people are used to it; I very rarely use other people’s patterns and I didn’t pay attention; etc.

This is very weak defense, but this is all I have.
Let’s take a look.

In a regular knitting pattern there are two sets of instructions – schematics of the garment and written directions. Schematics usually look like this:

Written directions usually read like this (I give only armhole and sleeve cap shaping):
 
Gauge: 111/2 sts and 18 rows =4" in St st.
 
Shape armholes: BO2 sts at beg of next 4 rows, then BO 1 st at beg of foll 2 rows. Work even until armhole measures 9", ending with a WS row. Shape shoulders. Sleeve: [The suggested length of the underarm seam is 181/2"; 48 sts at the widest part of the sleeve] Shape cap: BO 2 sts at beg of next 4 rows, next BO 1 st at beg of foll 14 rows—26 sts rem. BO 2 sts at beg of next 6 rows, then BO 3 sts at beg of foll 2 rows—8 sts rem. BO all sts.

Looks familiar? I bet, you have seen, have followed or have written very similar directions. I did.

What’s wrong with it? Actually, the very foundation of such direction writing is.
 
Let’s see. First, the knitter is given a suggested gauge for the project. Our knitter will do a gauge swatch and aim for the stitch gauge, and she will not be concerned with the row gauge, especially if she uses yarn different than indicated in the pattern. After all, she has been told number of times that row gauge is of less importance than stitch gauge. This sentiment travels from one knitting book to another; you’ll find it on the Internet, just anywhere. And, in some situations, it is so.
 
Then, the directions for the armhole say:
 
Work even until armhole measures 9", ending with a WS row.
 
Our knitter has no idea how many rows it’ll take her to reach full length of the armhole. She just knits, till she is happy with her armhole. And, most probably, completely disregards the fact that the gauge before blocking and the gauge after blocking might be two different things.
 
Then, as we move on to the sleeve cap, the knitter is given row-by-row instructions. True, there is a suggestion on the pattern schematics how high the designer planned the sleeve cap to be. But our knitter is going to follow written instructions, because otherwise she would have to recalculate the shaping of the sleeve cap and she doesn’t think about it; and she doesn’t want to do it.
 
In short: instructions for the armhole are given in units of measure; instructions for the sleeve cap are given in number of rows.
 
Result: It is impossible to be sure that the perimeter of the armhole and the perimeter of the sleeve cap are going to be the same; armhole that is too big; sleeve cap that doesn’t fit into the armhole; a lot of frustration; bad fit. Seaming nightmare follows.
 
This is how we write the knitting patterns. Tradition is a poor excuse for inferior pattern writing. I think we have to work out a better way.