I hope you’ve all had a fantastic, productive and restful weekend! One of my test knitters certainly did, with photos of a complete gadget case sent to me and received with delight.

I have spent most of the weekend working, pining after JS who was at a data weekend, and counting yarn! (Me, not JS.) That’s right, my yarn is now all entirely catalogued (by the number of grams!!) and put into labelled boxes. Well, almost. I bought two big boxes thinking that it would be enough. Turns out I need more like four big boxes. At least! (Don’t tell JS…why do you think I waited till he was gone before I counted?)

Gadget Case – Knitted by CK

The first piece in came from a friend, CK, who lives in Canada. She knitted a phone case in fingering weight yarn, 2.5 mm needles and without embroidery. Her feedback was really valuable, and included the following points:

• I loved how easy the pattern was to use (especially as I just made a customizable pattern for any kind of e-reader where you had to do the measurements and then do all the math yourself).
• For the switch to the second section (the patch bit) and the bind off, I might add whether they should be done on the RS or the WS – though I might just be picky.  ;)

  

I thought I’d address them both separately.

First off, I’m so pleased she loved it. I sent the pattern to ten people, and with about thirty seconds of having pressed ‘send’ for the first time, I spent about a week in a state of high anxiety, waiting for return emails and comments. One of my test-knitters cast on three items, and was messaging me basically from the get-go. It was quite hard to see (constructive) criticisms of something that JS and I spent hours on, but so, so appreciated. Hopefully the final document will be of much, much greater quality as a result.

Secondly, the point that CK brought up was really valid – not for the specific issue, but more to point out the way that I think differently about patterns. I tend to be a bit devil-may-care, and various fine elements of pattern-reading escape me. I knit first, ask later. I knew this would be an issue, so I tried really hard to make sure I included every bit of detail; but the fact that CK found something I’d forgotten was a really valuable bit of feedback. I will be interested to see what the others bring up; from Australia, Wales and the USA to name the three most common nationalities!

Anyway, that’s about all on this now. I anticipate being able to publish my beta version next week; I still have to take some process photos and get some extra feedback from people who aren’t knitters, but experts in document design! I want this to be beautiful. I know one other test-knitter has finished, and I’ll post some of her photos as soon as she manages to get them on her computer (and with her permission).

What do you think of the way I’m going about this? It’s my first ever foray into design (published) and I would love to get some feedback on my process!

Much love,

Corrie xx

Photos in this blog-post are kindly provided by CK, and copyright remains that of the original photographer.