A Triumph of the Web Knitting and Crochet Community

Ok knit and crochet wear designers and pattern publishers fess up.  You, with rare exception, don't adequately test the patterns you publish.

Do you disagree?  Read the following description of what adequate testing is and then let me know.  I'd love to promote your work, I'd love to purchase your work, I'd love to make your designs.  (Well, the making part would depend on if I liked the design.)

Adequate testing, I believe, is the testing by more than one or two testers of the completed pattern.  Specifically, each size that the pattern is offered in must be produced.  If the pattern has no size (for example a shawl or hat only offered in one size) then it must be tested at least by two testers and any comment about "one size fits all" should be modified to at least "one size fits many".  i.e. a shawl designed for the average size 14 women might overwhelm a petite size 1, or look silly on a size 50.

I repeat, a pattern for a garment must be tested at least once for every size it is published for.

We, the knitting and crochet community deserve nothing less.

And, now, its possible.

Oh I know what you as a designer, or you as a publisher are thinking.  That's completely impossible, silly, cost prohibitive and time consuming.  Why there would have to be multiple test knitters or crocheters. We'd have to provide them with yarn... too expensive.  It would be too hard to manage and exhausting to complete.  We'd never get any patterns published.

And so you, the traditional designers and publishers continue in your old ways and so your days I believe are numbered.

I foresee a time in the very near future when publications and designs will tout their testing of all their designs in all the sizes and they will be more successful than those that can not.

I foresee a day when patterns that are not tested in every size will be the minority.

I foresee a day when we can't imagine a time when they were not.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself here.  You may not even realize that today, most patterns are not adequately tested>

What, you the knitter or crocheter ask, the designs are not tested?

Oh, they are, but not enough.  In the traditional scheme of things a designer designs a garment in a smallish size, one that will fit those typical models. a sample is made of the design in the yarn specified in the design.  The designer may produce it, or it may be sent to a tester along with the yarn.  The sample is returned to the designer (or the publication) to be modeled and photographed.  The design is written in the current standard for writing for knitwear or crochet wear and modifications are incorporated in the design that should morph it into a a multiple of sizes according to standards published for each size.  The pattern is edited for conformance to standards and the math is checked (i.e. with the number of stitches in each row produce a garment that is wide enough bust and hips long enough for arms etc.)

The problem, as many of you who knit or crochet will readily confirm, is that when you go to knit or crochet the pattern, since it hasn't been tested in your size there may be mistakes not caught by the editor, or the pattern may not have been scaled well.  For example, a pair of pants I once knit were scaled for multiple sizes but the difference between the front and back rise (the amount of inches from the crotch to the waist) was just one inch no matter what the size.  Look at a pair of your jeans and measure the front and back rise.  Is it only one inch?  Well, my experience is that it may be in smaller sizes, but in larger sizes no.  i.e. is your butt bigger than your lower belly?  Its like producing a tight fitting sweater with the front and back the same length and no accommodation for breasts.

Still, you may be thinking, to get every size tested does seem like an enormous expense and a very tortuous production.


Poppycock.

With the bounty of the web, and the eagerness of knitters and crocheters to have new patterns and to talk with the designer and others working on the same pattern.  With the need of some of them to get help or to express their own ideas, to be of help,  to be a part of a community, the impossible becomes the possible.  The web has already changed the way the pattern business works and is changing it even further.

All the aspiring designer has to do is find her community. She does not need to offer expensive gifts of yarn, nor need to collect the sample knits so she can publish the results. She does have to be willing to help her community in making her garment, and be willing to listen to innumerable voices.  Some of these voices will be whiny, or overly critical but they may also be cheery, enthusiastic and appreciative.  When the projects are done, pictures, not garments are available to the designer as well as a rich history of information about her design and a solidly constructed pattern ready for the public.

Ah, the community, where can it be found?

You have no further to look than ravelry.com.  Ravelry is a free web site designed for knitters and crocheters to post pictures of their projects, find their own community of like minded crafts persons and artists and explore new areas of their craft.  Designers can also publish their patterns with a link to where they can be purchased, or even sell them as downloads direct from the site.  There are groups, i.e. communities on ravelry that exist purely to test a specific designers work.  Even more importantly there are groups where multiple designers can offer a new pattern for testing and testers can apply to participate in the test.  The tester receives a copy of the pattern but uses their own yarn and keeps the finished product.  Each design has a thread in the groups discussion pages and testers can ask questions, note where they are in completing the test, comment or suggest ideas for the designer to incorporate.  Designers follow the thread helping and responding to comments.  At the end of the test (a deadline is set at the beginning) a tester adds their completed test as a project on their own personal page and incorporates a link to the designer.  The designer provides the tester with a final copy of the pattern.  Because projects in ravelry can be searched, potential purchasers for the design can see multiple examples of it and the designer has multiple pictures to refer potential purchasers to.

Its a win win, but of most importance, is that the individual purchasing the design can have confidence that the design has actually be produced in the size that they wish to make.  This is an advantage that is light years ahead of the current knit and crochet wear industry.

And yes, there are many people quite willing to participate in such testing.  I've been a part of one test and am currently participating in another.  In the first I made a shawl and in the second I am making a pair of felted slippers.  Next I'm going to select a sweater or dress.  The group I am working with is Free Pattern Testers. I'm enjoying the process immensely.

I hope that the designers will capitalize on the wonderful advantage they have, that their patterns have been tested in all the sizes that they offer.

Go. Join the group.  Join a test.  Be a part of this emerging community and look for and support designers who have had their designs tested in this way.

Fun with Doillies

I remember grandmothers house in the 1950's.  There were, doillies everywhere.

I love these little bits of lace.  They lay under vases, over the backs of chairs, centered on a round table.  Most of them were white, but ocassionally a right red or green or maybe a natural colored big of complex stitchery laid formally, drapying a table, or deocrating a tray. 

Tiny, intricate stitches;  designs confusingly charted.  Who makes these things anyways?

I've tried to make them before, but the tiny stitches and complex designs defeated me.

Then there's the space thing.  As in lack of it.  I have a very tiny living space and though I have a very big studio in which I pursue my art, it's, well, a studio.  No real places for doilies amidst the projects in the works, the art supplies, the stuff that may or may never be art someday.  So, I do admire the wonderful delicate and fancy stitching on the doilies, I just don't have anything or anyplace where they could be, or where they'd look ok.

So today, at this grandmother's home, there are none.

I guess I could make some as gifts, but there are doilies available, mass produced somewhere, that look pretty good.  Why go to all that trouble of making you're own?  Why bother gifting someone who just bought 10 at hobby lobby for a couple of bucks a piece?

I'm sure those of you who do a craft or an art struggle with this too.  Where to put it all, who to gift and will they appreciate it?  Well why do anything?

So, for whatever reason, I seem to be seeing doilies in my dreams and in my mind as I do other things.  I'm hesitant, at first, to be frustrated by the tiny.  Why, I'm thinking, do I have to use size 10 crochet thread and a size 7 steel crochet hook and make something that takes weeks and is 7" in circumference?  What kind of crazy person would do that?

Perhaps, what I should do, is morph these doilies into something else.

So I grabbed some worsted weight yarn, and an H hook and I'm off.  There is something very relaxing about crocheting around and around in ever changing stitch pattern as something grows bigger and bigger.   Maybe that's why they do it, the doily makers.

The traditional yarn is made with cotton crochet thread.  Maybe you've seen it?  Aunt Lydias, or the like, size 10, 400 yards in a ball no bigger than a mug of coffe. You use a small, steel crochet hook and at my age, you can hardly see the stitches.  You can make several doilies from one ball.

Use a bigger yarn, and you get, well, a bigger thing. 

My first attempt, in grey, I left some holes and I got sort of a vest. But, I don't actually like it, that is, I don't think, I'd like to wear it anywhere. Besides, I didn't have enough of one shade of gray worsted yarn to complete it.  Luckily I had enough of several grays and I was able to complete it.  Still, I like the idea of a doily as vest.  So maybe I'll try again.

And hey, maybe it was just too small for me.  On a child it looks great!

Too bad she moved.  Redo...

And, make one about 2x this and try it out again.

Then I found this group on Ravelry (www.ravelry.com, group search on rugs) , that is for rug makers and suddenly, it all makes sense.  That great big lacy thing I made would look great as a rug, if only it had a little more thickness. The ladies on the rug group say, a multitude of things might be good for making a rug out of a doily patternm.  Rope, upholstery piping, macrame cord, yarn.  But they say use 3 strands of yarn held together. 

Since yarn is what I have, well here goes. 

By the end of the weekend I almost have a rug, and I used only yarns from my stash, that is, yarns I've bought over the years, or had gifted to me, or picked up cheap or no cost from thrift shops or hobby swaps.  No, I didn't have enough of any one color to make the rug but I had multiple skeins or partial skeins of wine, dark purple, red varrigated and several shades of beige.  Here's where the real skill, and just maybe the art comes in.  I am using someone's doily pattern but I have to understand both the pattern and how to blend and present color in multiple crochet stitches in order to get an end result that transforms a stack of miscellaneous fiber into WOW!

One week later:   The result?  A beautiful rug.  Grandmother, I think, would be proud.  Is it art?  Who cares?  It looks good and will make a great rug , or even a lap rug on these cold winter days.

Learned a great lesson here.  I didn't have even enough to complete some rows of one color , but since I was holding 3 strands together I was able to blend 3 of this then 3 of that and get pretty close for the row.

And, I've made the doily also in size 10 thread.  I've found a new way to display doilies.  (Thanks to the Doily Heads group on Ravelry).  I've crocheted around a metal macrame hoop and stitched the doily to the hoop.  Now I can hang it in the window or on the wall.

So maybe that's who makes the intricate tiny stitches thingies, crazy people like me.