DOUBT aka Crochety Crocheter

Mary, one of my crochet students, attends Country Thunder every year. This involves camping out and a lot of country western themed activities. When I came across a pattern for a cowboy hat, I just knew it was meant for Mary. I saw that the pattern was not for a beginner like Mary, but just knew how much she would like to wear a cowboy hat which she crocheted for herself to Country Thunder. The pattern was complex. However, I, wearing my own imaginary Wizard in Teaching Crochet" hat figured I (that's a capital "I") could teach her. While I know my crocheting skills are good, I also know that they pale in comparison to the skills of Gwenn and Marge and BJ at the crochet guild. However, when it comes to TEACHING -- well I say from on top of my WIZARDry Stool, ( where I am ignorantly precariously perched,)" I can teach anybody to crochet anything." Hah!

When Mary started crocheting the hat, under my "expert" tutelage (Hah again), it didn't go so well. After the first so-called lesson, I took the pattern home and tried to crochet at least the first few rounds so that I could show Mary how to do it.
"There's something wrong with this pattern. I'm sure this pattern wasn't tested before it was published. This is too complex. I could do a better job of writing this pattern. There are mistakes in the way it is written." and so on, and so on, I told Mary, who listens to her crochet guru!!!
Mary keeps plodding away and doing some frogging under my expert tutelage using a "BAD PATTERN." I, too, crochet, frog, crochet, frog so many times, saying bad words until I begin to DOUBT not the pattern this time but me. With the help of Mary and Donna who each hold a ball of pink yarn, (this is a two strands together pattern) and roll the yarn back into the ball while I rip out the stitches, this time to the very first slip knot. The expert crochet teacher has alas and alack become the crochety crocheter!
In the quiet of my recliner, with the TV turned off, I try once more from the very beginning - and low and behold, the pattern works! Complex, yes! Wrong, no!
I type out the pattern for Mary, eliminating the abbreviations which she finds confusing, and add a few words of explanation in RED type, and we start over again.
I guess the moral of this story -- is to SHUT-UP about the pattern, and stay off high perches of Wizardry. Granted some patterns are poorly written, but more are even poorly interpreted. And I am -- your not so wizardry Dorothy who is clicking her heels and returning to KANSAS.
Don't give up Mary! I may not be wizardry nor the expert crocheter of my dreams, but I don't give up. You will crochet your cowboy hat, and I will crochet mine, and Iwill take pictures of you wearing yours and publish it on this very own blog (I hope). : >}