Check

Made some progress on the Hat booklet. Mary, my pattern checker and I have now worked out a system which I am very happy with. I mail her hardcopies of the patterns I want her to look at. She marks them all up with her corrections and then we arrange for a phone call and go over them. This gives me the opportunity to ask her opinion on certain aspects of the work and it also gives me a chance to talk out loud about anything I'm not sure of. I can usually decide then on what I'm going to do.

We discussed whether the brims of the hats should be done with a size smaller needle. Quite often this is done on hats so that the brim hugs the head tightly which is good. But ... it involves another circular needle or set of double points which is another investment for a newish knitter. And hats are quite often a project that a new knitter will tackle. So I decided to go without the smaller needle.

In some of the patterns there is a spot where it might say "work 3 garter stitch ridges". All the hats in this booklet are written so that any yarn can be used. So we looked at these patterns and thought about what it would look like if you knit 6 rounds in sock yarn or 6 rounds in chunky yarn. What if you knit 6 rounds on a Newborn hat or a Large Adult hat? How would this affect the look of the hat? Sometimes it did and we changed it to x number of inches measurement, and sometimes it didn't and we left it alone.
We will have an abbreviation section at the front of the booklet but we discussed which abbreviations should go with each of the patterns so that anything unusual is there when you need it. We decided that any pattern with an I-Cord needs the explanation there at hand.

The question I'm still pondering is whether to put the M1 increase abbreviation on the patterns which use it. I have had several calls lately where knitters have used the Kf/b increase (knit into front and back of the same stitch) in the place of the M1 and this throws your stitch count out if it's set up for the M1. Maybe it's not as well known as I had thought.

Quite a good conversation and I will have another list of questions to discuss after the next set of patterns go off to Mary. That's half of the patterns checked. Hooray. I have some more editing to do next week and more test knitting of hats. No more progress on the sock yet but I'll be knitting on it tomorrow.
-Deb

P.S. Commenters: And yes Samm, I am really glad it's not the other way around (see comments on last post).

I think that Valerie, from the comments, is hooked folks. Unless she runs into a real roadblock we have another sock knitter. Yes! It's all part of our plan for knitters to take over the world. Hee, hee.

MommaBear, I am trying to decide which of these samples (with the weird increases) to make into a garment. Or which to do first maybe because I would love to try all of them. Time, where does it go?