Lots of people on Ravelry and Instagram post pictures of their patterns telling people that they “hacked” it. I figured out what that meant when I first started seeing it: you take a pattern, but there’s something about it that you want to change, for whatever reason, so you make an adjustment of some kind to get the outcome you desire.

When I first saw ‘hacked’ sweaters, I was very impressed. I knew nothing about garment design other than the basic “if you follow the pattern and your gauge is correct, it should come out right.” Of course, sometimes, patterns are entirely wrong (beware of free patterns that aren’t from reputable sources! Use Ravelry!) but most of the time, designers know what they’re doing…or, at the very least, their tech editor does. But how did all these other knitters figure it out?

I was never a ‘crafty’ kid, and the reason I liked knitting so much was because there were tangible instructions that told me exactly what to do, and if I followed them, the end result was more or less the same as the picture in the pattern. As a ten-year-old, I’d read a cable pattern and made a cable (shocked when that turned out right, let me tell you). Later, as an adult, I’d figured out how to turn a sock heel the same way: following directions. That’s how knitting worked, right?

When I started graduate school, I could not stop knitting colorwork. I started with complicated Scandinavian mittens and eventually graduated to full-fledged fair-isle sweaters (albeit without steeking, which still scares me – soon, though). I made enough sweaters to keep an army (of graduate students) warm, which I’m still working on. I made coffee cup holders. I made things from yarn I dyed myself. I really jumped headfirst into it. But I never strayed from a pattern. Someone had taken the time to grade it, have it test-knit, and had succeeded in selling it, so why should I assume I knew what to do better than a real-live designer?

And then, one day, my aunt saw a Love Note sweater (Tin Can Knits, of course) that I’d made by pairing a mohair-silk with a soft single-ply fingering-weight yarn, and said, “I want this one. But without this lace at the top, I don’t need that.” It seemed easy enough. The increases weren’t dependent on the lace panels. I could just leave that part out.

But when I took a look at the pattern, it didn’t seem like that would be the best one to follow for this sweater. Love Note is constructed with evenly spaced increases at the top of the yoke, before the lace panel begins, and then a few raglan increases after the panel, before sleeve separation. Because the lace is the visual focus, it doesn’t matter that the increases are worked like this (and the fit is great, so it works), but without a lace panel, it didn’t seem to make much sense.

I found the perfect solution in Flax: a free pattern by Tin Can Knits that comes in gauges for both worsted- and fingering-weight yarns. Its construction is dead-simple, with raglan increases at four points around the yoke, and it has a funky garter-stitch panel running down the sleeves. I had made Flax before, and I actually quite like the garter panel, but I figured I could do without it for my aunt’s soft merino-mohair sweater. Hack #1 accomplished.

As a quick aside, if you want to make your own Flax sweater, you can find the pattern here: http://tincanknits.com/thesimplecollection.html

The next question: should I choose Flax or Flax Light? What would the gauge be like when holding a fingering-weight single yarn with a laceweight mohair-silk? Love Note is worked on huge needles (by thin yarn’s standards), with a very loose gauge (16 sts/4″), and as I had discovered, it was actually quite easy to snag the sweater while wearing it. A slightly tighter gauge, like the one for Flax (18 sts/4″), actually worked better, but I had to swatch on a few different needle sizes.

I achieved this gauge by knitting with needles two sizes smaller than the ones I used for Love Note (I went down from a 9 to a 7), no garter panel, bracelet-length bell sleeves like Love Note, and a slightly cropped body. Hacks #2-4 accomplished.

The real trick? Check your horizontal gauge. You can figure almost anything out with that. Vertical gauge rarely matters – you just need to keep the same measurements as your body. Hacking a garment is not often difficult, but be careful when hacking a pattern that involves multiple pieces that need to be sewn together. Make sure all your math is correct!

TL;DR: once you figure your knitting out, it’s a lot easier to make it do what you want. If you like a pattern but not every part of it, chances are you can hack it to make a garment or accessory you love. And, yeah, it might not always work. But the good news is that you can always rip back and try again. The more you get used to ripping back, the easier it’ll become. And the more garments you make and patterns you read, the more likely your modifications will come out the way you want them to!