Pattern woes

In one of my past posts (specifically: this one) I talked about my adventures in my first ever knitting class. I'm going to update you all on the project that we worked on in the class, and my thoughts on the pattern. The particular pattern that the class focused on was Whitefish Ripples. It looks gorgeous, right? I really like the pattern itself; I think that the buttonholes are neat, and the yarn that we got to go with the pattern (Cascade Ultra Pima Paints) is a perfect fit. I think it's going to look really really excellent when blocked, and is easily something that I would actually wear. Unfortunately, and take this with a grain or two of salt, I thought that the pattern was a little bit difficult to read, and I know that I wasn't the only one there that was struggling with it. The directions for each of the stitches were spelled out, but, in my opinion, not enough to be one hundred percent clear. I had to tink back several times for one row because I didn't understand the directions. It made me glad that there was someone there to help, because without her, I don't think that I would have made it through the first ten rows. I would have given up and moved on to another project. It also didn't help that there wasn't an actual chart to go along with the written instructions. I know that some knitters detest charts and prefer written instructions, but I like to be able to see a rough sketch of the finished row/section, and I like seeing where all of my stitches are going and how many I should have between each repeat. Maybe I'm being nitpicky here, but it really seemed like a decent amount of the other ladies in the class were having issues with the pattern instructions as well. I really hate to ditch on a pattern, especially since I'm liking it so well now. I also know how difficult it is to write a pattern and then try and make a chart that matches perfectly. But in some cases, I think a chart is necessary to make sure that the knitter understands what the design is and how to execute it, and I really think that this pattern is like that. Like I said, I'm really enjoying how my pattern is turning out, despite the initial difficulties, and I'd honestly still encourage people to check it out, but read over the explanations for the different stitches super carefully, which is probably what my problem was in the first place!