After our snowy start, Spring Break was filled with the usual round of "get the kids in for this or that appointment while they are not in school" and the waiting that happens when everyone else has the same idea. A couple of things had to be postponed, mainly mine, but the week saw most of our major errands run and Spring Cleaning well under way.
What does that have to do with sampling, testing and pleasure you may ask?
Well, actually nothing! Except the reason I don't have a lot of knitting to share with you, when I am testing it is usually a secret, but this week did bring up an interesting topic...couple of them actually, but today I am going to focus on one......what is the difference between test knitting, sample knitting and pleasure knitting the way it is done at Chez Yarn Diet?
I am very lucky, although all three use a different mind set, I can (usually) combine at least two out of the three every time, but sometimes I am doing just one
.
For instance, when I am test knitting a pattern, which in my case usually involves lace of some kind, so doubles as pleasure knitting, hopefully I am looking at each square of the chart and making sure that all of the symbols are there, that row repeats actually fit across rows and that stitch counts are accurate. I cannot assume that any missing yarn overs are just my own lack of attention, but go back and recheck and then either fire off an email or fix what I did wrong. :)
When I am sample knitting the idea is to get my knitting as close as is physically possible to being "perfect" so that if there are other samples being knit, by different people, and they are all lined up together (for instance showing the same pattern worked in a range of different color choices) you can't tell who knit what. Sometimes I am lucky, if not very bored, and I am knitting all the colors of the same pattern which makes that part easier.
And finally, when I am just knitting to make my own heart sing, I change things up as I want to or need to, assume that all mistakes are my own and compensate for them, or just plain ignore the instructions and do what I think is right. (Probably explains why I got no less than three updates to the same pattern I knit at Christmas talking about mistakes that I thought were just in my knitting of it!)
This week saw a little bit of knitting I can share, WinterExtravaganza is still trucking along! My purple version is ready to have the neck side stitches picked up and some shaping added.
The beads on the purple one make TDQ happy!
The grey has "been there, done that"!
I also got in a few more repeats on my ColourMart Shawl. I am still not sure how many I am going to work, but I know that there are at least several more in my future, this is so light and airy I want it to be big and snuggly too!
Finally some very plain vanilla socks to knit in the dark and while in waiting rooms. Sometimes it is so much fun knitting in public, watching people trying to watch you knit without you noticing. That is especially hard for strangers to do when you don't have to look at your knitting!
Til next time, Knit On!
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