Have you seen the hot mess that is the Vogue Knitting Early Fall 2013 edition?

I’m usually happy to buy a download of Vogue Knitting without having first eyeballed the patterns before parting with my cash — usually there are some great patterns and it’s certainly worth a few dollars. But I have three words for you about this issue (or, ok, a few phrases with 3 words in each of them):

Knitted. Varsity. Jackets.

Intarsia. Animal. Faces.

Cropped. Wool. Sweaters.

This is a joke, right? The new April Fools’ Day is in now in June, right?

Just LOOK at these designs.

I’m sure the folks who designed these are smart, talented designers, and did what they could under the circumstances when a Vogue Knitting editor said to them, ‘hey, guys, we’re going in a really exciting direction this time. For this issue we’re gonna do VARSITY JACKETS!’.

Now get a load of this. It has all the latest essential design elements stylish gals want: it’s a vest! It’s a vest with a zipper! It’s made from Christmas colours! And who can resist a green and white puppy! Is this really in Vogue magazine??

And there are some cropped sweaters that, to be fair, are lovely if you like cropped sweaters. I don’t see the point of them, personally — if it’s cold enough for a sweater I’d like it to cover my whole torso. I don’t need people wondering aloud, as they do when you tell them you made the cropped sweater you’re wearing, ‘what happened — did you run out of yarn?’.

Here’s a lovely scarf from this issue. I think it’s really sweet that the staff at Vogue Knitting let their kids submit projects from their home ec class.

Really, these designs are the kind of things that modern knitters spend their time trying to convince others that knitting is NOT all about.

Ok, I think that’s all the snark I can safely afford to withdraw from the Karma bank for now. Here’s the pattern that I would consider knitting from this issue. I like the clean lines, and of course, the colour blocking.

But ultimately I kinda feel like I want my 5 bucks back.

How about you? What do you think of the patterns in this issue?