The Sweatshop of Love Blog

A few weeks ago I was contacted by Lisa Savage at Petite Tuques about a new knitters design journal she designed. I’ve never used a design journal before, and am constantly surrounded by college ruled wire notebooks, printer and graph paper, so I was curious to see what she came up with.

Sneak Peek! Lisa’s Design Journal

Lisa has created two downloadable and printable journals, one for knitters and one for crocheters. Each journal is set up to make taking your notes to your computer super easy. There are spaces for needle size, gauge, yarn, sketches, all organized and very cute.

Graph and Sketch Pages

What I like about this downloadable format is that you can print the pages you need. Know you won’t need graph paper for this design? Don’t print that page. Lots of complicated instructions? Print a few notes pages. Sick of looking up abbreviations, standard yarn weights, and needle sizes? Those are included, too.

Find more information and purchase Knitting Rockstars Design Journals and Crochet Rockstars Design Journals. The journals are discounted this week for the launch!

This week Lisa has organized a design journal launch party that started yesterday at her blog Petite Tuques, and will continue around the blog world with designer insight from Lisa. Today’s tip is about hiring tech editors.

From Lisa of Petite Tuques: Hiring a Tech Editor

Now that you’ve written up your pattern, it’s time to get it written on a program like MS Word. You might think that just slapping together all your information haphazardly will be enough for the publishers, but think again.

Knitting patterns are standardized to look similar, with common abbreviations and layouts. From my personal experience, I thought I had it covered because I’ve read dozens of patterns, but my first pattern had tons of mistakes that I thought weren’t mistakes.

There are three steps to finding the perfect editor

- Decide what type of editor
– Find candidates
– Evaluate the candidates

Decide what type of editor

There are two types of editors, copy and technical.

A copy editor will be able to proofread your pattern, and improve the formatting, style, and accuracy of text. They are also responsible for adding any “display copy”, such as headlines, standardized headers and footers, and makes sure that the text makes sense.

A technical editor deals more with making sure that all your calculations , units & measurements, and grammar are precise and correct.

Which one is best for you? If your first language isn’t english then maybe a copy editor who translates would be best. If your pattern is simple with not much shaping, but your punctuation is horrible, a copy editor would be best for that too.

If your pattern is complex with lots of graphs/charts/calculations/sizing then a technical editor would be best for that.

Find Candidates: The best place to start looking is on the ravelry group “indy-pattern-designers-resources” You will find people offering their services, and how to reach them.

Evaluate the Candidates: You’ve found some editors, but how do you decide on which one is best for you? Here a couple points to ponder.

- Experience is always a plus, but more importantly the quality. Are there happy customer testimonials on the website? Get in touch with a few and find out what their experience was like.
– Does the editor have the knowledge to do the work; having her own self-published work is a good sign that she understands the ins and outs of writing in the “knitting world”.
– Look for examples of the published work; most people who design will have a least one free pattern and you’ll be able to judge if you like the formatting and layout- chances are your pattern would be formatted the same way.
– Last point is on price. Don’t judge the potential editor on the price. She might charge a low fee if she’s new to editing or has only been doing it in the last year. Whereas someone who has a higher fee might be an expert with published patterns and tons of happy customers. On the flip side, she might be charging a low fee because she only does it as a hobby. You want someone who is dedicated to the craft and takes it seriously.

Tomorrow the blog tour heads to Knit, Nicole, Knit, and be sure to stop by Lisa’s launch party site to keep up with the blog tour.