Fight with my Best Friend (Wenlan Chia, WTF??)

Imagine it. You secured a bundle of the hottest yarn, (Twinkle Soft Chunky) with the cutest pattern (Wenlan Chia's Best Friend Sweater) and you are all set. Like a good knitter, you read the pattern before you start. Good thing really, because the directions are spread all over the place! Check it out...One really had to pay attention because these directions are... well, different.

Ok, lets see, to complete a round, one must follow instructions from column A, column B on page 1 and another one from column A on page 2. Ok, this one will be a dozy! knit, knit, knit, knit, knit...

Wait a minute. this looks nothing like a sweater. What the hell is going on here? This doesn't look ANYTHING like the pattern.

In short, I got about halfway through the project and realized something was terribly wrong. No disrespect to Wenlan Chia, I love her yarn, but I am not a fan of her patterns. Now I know that thousands of people have worked her patterns with great success, and perhaps my skills as a knitter are not as tight as I thought they were, but I just could not figure out what she was talking about.

So I ripped it out.

I searched desperately for another pattern that would accommodate this unusually beautiful yarn. Unfortunately all the patterns were actually by Chia so that didn't do me much good. Until I remembered the French Girl Knits book. The Wrenna pattern uses Twinkle Soft Chunky and it was NOT written by Wenlan Chia. So, I am working on that sweater now and I hope I have better success with that one than I did with the Best Friend.

Has anyone else had this experience with a Chia pattern? And what is the deal with her models? None of them have "curves." So how can we gauge how the pattern will look on actual women?

Sorry for the Knitting Rant, but I had to get that off my needles!