If you fancy having a go at my next design before it’s published, then you can volunteer yourself as a test knitter. You get the pattern for free – before it’s available to other knitters – and in return you just have to give me a bit of feedback and a couple of photos. You can find out more about how I approach test knitting by scrolling on down.
If that sounds like something you fancy, then sign up for my mailing list to hear all about new test knits. Oh, and a sneaky tip: you can often see what I’m working on in my Instagram stories.
What to expect as a test knitter
My patterns are all tech edited and reviewed before they get to the test knitting stage, so they should be pretty much error free. So test knitting for me isn’t so much about checking that the pattern works from a maths and design point of view; it’s about finding out how it’ll work in the real world of real proper knitters.
That means I’m always happy for testers to use whatever yarn they fancy (just so long as it meets gauge). And if you want to make some alterations to the pattern, go for it! The people who buy the pattern will be doing that too, so it’d be a bit daft of me to stop people doing it in the testing stage.
So what am I looking for in terms of test knit feedback? Well, I want to know that my instructions read nice and clearly and don’t leave you wondering what the hell I’m going on about. If you think something could be worded more clearly, I want to know. And I want to know how the pattern looks worked up in different yarns, by different knitters, with different knitting styles.
As a thank you, test knitters get a free pattern of their choice, plus a discount code for all my other patterns.
It’s not a paid gig at the moment, I’m afraid. I’m aware that there’s a very strong argument to be made for paying test knitters, and I would love to do that – but at the moment I’m running on such tight margins that paying test knitters would quite literally put me out of business. Which is not great.
Anyway. Before I get ranting about how we don’t value creative work properly, I’m going to step away from the computer. But if you want to help out with some of that creative work, then sign up for my mailing list for test knitting opportunities.