Yvonne Feng, the designer of this issue’s Nachtfalter fingerless mitten pattern, is a first time Knitty contributor. Indeed, this is her first design published anywhere!
She tells us about her experience…
A Budding Designer’s First Submission
Submitting my first pattern to Knitty (and first knitting submission anywhere) was nerve wracking. Is the design too simple? Too complex? Are there many mistakes? Will others find the design worth knitting? Having these questions was a situation I had never expected just a couple of years after randomly buying needles, yarn, and a beginner’s knitting book while stuck for a few hours in Hamburg, Germany.
I could never knit a pattern without adding alterations and flairs of my own – a section of cable, a stitch pattern, a concept for construction can inspire a project at any point of the day. When a good friend of mine, an experienced designer, suggested that I write some of my ideas up as proper patterns, I jumped at the challenge.
Although I have followed many patterns, I was unclear on basic terminology, formatting and charting. How do I write instructions so that another knitter can reproduce what I have done? How do I take decent photographs of a knitted work? What is tech-editing or testing? Over the past year, with the support of my knitting circle and the internet, I learned how to transform a concept from my needles into a pattern on paper. I loved sketching the designs and doing the arithmetic but was terrible at keeping track of abbreviations and explaining tricky parts of the construction.
Then it came time to send that pattern into the world. Hitting that final point-of-no-return submit button was the toughest part for me.
Then Knitty emailed me – my pattern was accepted!
The editor did the heavy lifting to get the pattern ready — they streamlined the text, fixed all of the mistakes and rendered the chart in professional software. It was so cool to watch the Word and Excel documents transform into the sleek online publication that I have seen for years.
In the last weeks, I have begun to see projects of my Knitty design pop up on Ravelry. Knitters are putting their own spins on the pattern and observing this has been thrilling. I am hooked!
Pingback: On Nachtfalter: A Designer Guest Post | Yarn Buyer
I’ve been looking and looking on Ravelry for some finished Nachfalters, and haven’t been able to find any reference at all. Where should I go to see them?
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