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Sunday, May 4, 2014

The Problem With Test Knitting

Now don't misunderstand me, I love test knitting for some of my favorite knit wear designers.  When my hands were doing their own thing and I found knitting difficult (some days impossible) it broke my heart that a couple of designs got knit by people other than me first (well second, the designer usually does get first go at things!)  But, occasionally there is a problem with test knitting.

You see, the timing between coming up with a great idea, charting it and knitting it, knitting it again, sending the pattern to your testers, getting input, making corrections (or changes to the design), sending it to the publisher, edits and more edits, to publication is a long (and if you are the designer, harrowing) road.

Part of the commitment with being a test knitter is you have to be able to keep a secret, so things get knit, photographed to show the designer and then packed away until they can be shared. (Ok, maybe I cheat on the packed away part sometimes and wear the things, or use them, which is probably why I have the small problem I do now!)

The New Vintage Lace, by Andrea Jurgrau is hitting a book store near you very shortly!  For those that can't wait, Interweave has an e-book version  and for those that want a sneak peek Amazon has a Look Inside feature.  Andrea has started putting the patterns on Ravelry so that we can link projects, and suggested that her test knitters could post a few of their finished object pictures.

Herein lies the problem!  First up she has posted the hats and some doilies, and while the hats were easy to get my hands on, and I know I knit the doilies I have no idea where I put them all!

So until I do, here is a small sampling of some of the test knits!

Clematis Doily

and hat




 Peaseblossom Hat


 


And finally, Giverny Beret
 

In other knitting news, the second fractal blanket went through a few more modifications and is one quarter the way through the border.  I haven't been getting much knitting time lately so it is pretty slow going.  Maybe one day soon I will post pictures of that too!

~M

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