handmade by stefanie

It's been over a year since I did my reader survey, and believe it or not, I am still getting around to writing about some of the suggested topics! Knitting-related apps were requested by several readers, and after looking over all of  my previous app reviews , it's become clear that this is a topic that is worth revisiting. Nearly all of those reviews were written before I switched from Android to iPhone (and that happened over 5 years ago!). Obviously, I'm not an early adopter. In fact, you could say I'm pretty old school: I still don't own a microwave, and I never stopped buying vinyl (in fact, the number of records in our house far outnumbers the amount of CDs we still own). And when it comes to knitting, I have always preferred print copies of patterns, even the ones I buy digitally. But my recent craft room #konmari excercise was eye-opening: I discovered a huge pile of printed PDFs I've amassed over the years. Some were pristine and clearly never u

I've been test and sample knitting for several years, and most recently one of my samples made the front cover of the collection - I have to admit, I was elated! Since I always get a few questions when I share photos of my samples, I thought a blog post talking about the ins and outs of test and sample knitting would be a handy reference for anyone curious about this aspect of the yarn industry. Also, please know that there is also a need for test and sample crocheting, too! I just don't feel like I have strong enough crochet skills to engage in that type of work, and writing "test and sample knitting and crocheting" every time seems like overkill. I hope you'll forgive the shorthand used for the remainder of this post. That's my sample on the cover of the Radiance collection from KnitPicks! Sample Knitting VS. Test Knitting First, let's talk about the differences between sample knitting and test knitting - and please note, sometimes you will be d