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We all know that knitters in general are amazing people. Almost all the knitters I know are so generous in very many ways: they are generous in spirit, in giving of their time, their knowledge, their yarn, their cookies, their sense of humour and their friendship. Thank you to all my fellow knitters who make enrich my life with their amazing presence.

There is a special group of knitters that I need to thank especially and those are the knitters that help designers to create better patterns for all the other knitters out there. I am specifically referring to test knitters now.

MarinaoftheSea’s Grasker Hat

These amazing knitters test the pattern to ensure that what I have designed and knit matches the words and chart I used to describe how to make it and that those following those instructions will actually create the project. This may seem silly. As the designer, I have already knit the project. Parts of it, I have knit and ripped out several times. It seems self-evident that the instructions will make the project.  Unfortunately, it is not as easy as that for many reasons, but mostly because I am human.

  • Sometimes translating knitting into words can be confusing. When I write instructions, they may make sense to me, but may not make sense to other people.
  • Patterns may have different sizes and I do not knit every size of a project and even if I did, I do not have ready access to variously sized models. Also, not all sizing guidelines work as well as we might hope.
  • When reworking a pattern many times to create a better design, keeping track of all the changes can be complex and mistakes can happen.
  • General mistakes happen. No matter how careful I am no matter how many times I edit my pattern, I am a human and a fairly distracted one and I make mistakes.

I really lucked out with the test knitters for my upcoming pattern, the Grasker Hat. My testers were all patient, kind, observant and very helpful. I am truly grateful for their help in making this pattern so much better. They gave great feedback and helped this pattern be better than it was before they got involved.

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LaceChick’s Grasker Hat

Many of the test knitters made more than one hat in various sizes. When some of the testers found that the hat was not fitting as intended in some of the sizes, they were so generous as to reknit the hat with the corrected pattern to ensure that other knitters would create a hat that fits properly.

So, thank you, thank you, thank you to my terrific test knitters: Kntnpathdoc (who made a ton of versions), TeriLG, LaceChick, ForestFlower23, MarinaOfTheSea!

To see more projects on Ravelry, click here!

This entry was posted in General.

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