I unearthed this knitastrophe whilst researching double knitting. I was just beginning the checked hat, and I Googled into the page pictured below in search of instructions on double knitting. While there is a minimal amount of useful information on that page, mostly what I found was what not to do.
First and foremost, I hate knitted potholders. Knitting, even double knitting, is unreliable for handling anything of a high temperature. Knitting is full of holes between stitches, even knit at a tight gauge. Even without your skin coming in contact with the bakeware, the heat can still conduct itself fairly well. I personally do not want severe burns on my hands.
Also, temperatures that high can be bad for the yarn. There's a reason knitted hoods for soldiers have to be made of one hundred per cent wool, not wool and acrylic blends: In dangerous situations involving flame, blended fabric can melt and stick to skin. Also, plenty of yarns are flammable, which you don't want near a gas stove. A couple of my potholders have burn marks on them from leaving them on the counter by the stove. Of course, even an electric stove might be a bad idea if you're a bad enough cook or your stove is old and shitty.
We also have the problem of using knitted items in a situation as messy as a kitchen. My pot holders and dish towels are covered in stains, which is fine since they're all cheap crap. I would never want to put anything I'd knitted to such a purpose, even if it were more hideous than the pictured item.
Now. Moving past the practical (or rather, impractical) applications of a knitted potholder, I'll move on to the aesthetic problems and actual bad knitting involved.
I don't have the slightest fucking clue what that pattern is supposed to be, but I know it's wrong. The weird gap in the black outline gives it away, but even without that, the author herself says so: "See on the picture, where there is a sort of break in the black outline of the Dharma logo? I call that the mistake line. Everything under it is where I used the wrong technique - always working the same colors together, and mixing up the k,p order. That is wrong,. Wrong, wrong, wrong, no matter how logical it seemed at the time. Wrong."
Much like her punctuation, this knitter's knitting is . . . wrong, to say the least. First, there's that mistake line she already pointed out. Why the hell would you not frog that? I would. Remember the G in the Igby blanket? I will knit something ten times over if that's what it takes to get it right. Second, she did not weave in the loose ends as she went along, which is crucial in double knitting. Third, she didn't have the sense to hold the yarns separately. In double knitting, the best way to prevent tangles is to hold one color in your right hand and the other color in your left hand. There are a dozen tutorials on this; I mastered it in minutes when working on the checked hat. Without separating the yarns, they easily twist around each other and tangle, as she discovered.
Also, the logo is not centered. I don't see how centering something can be a problem; I didn't have any trouble when working with logos on the Igby blanket or Obama sweater because I counted everything on the chart first, duh. And then I counted at least twice during the actual knitting, and if I got it wrong, I ripped it out and redid it. For God's sake, don't leave it if you know it looks like shit. If you can fix it, you should. Of course, her excuse was, "Why should my potholder be perfect? I'm not." True, but you don't go around advertising every flaw you possess, do you? Don't you try to fix problems with yourself and portray yourself as awesome, or as awesome as your standards will allow? I readily admit to being peevish, snarky, and dorky, but I establish myself as awesome within those parameters. Similarly, when it comes to knitting, I don't post half-completed mistakes on the web. I frog them and fix them. Would that this knitter had done the same.