Me in Technical editing

One day translating patterns and doing proofreading for the third time, I remembered forgotten feeling that I love doing tasks that others find tedious - endless repeats and checks and numbers. That’s when I knew that I could be the right person for technical editing and technical editing could be right for me. I signed up for Joeli’s Technical edit course waitlist and when the opportunity came, I signed up and did it! (Learn to Tech Edit (Knitting) by Joeli Kelly).

I’ve been editing regularly since 2020 and my current portfolio includes more than 120 patterns and 3 magazine issues.

My experience as a crafter

I’ve been knitting since a very young age - my mother taught me when I was around 4 or 5 years old (more than 30 years now). I come from post-Soviet childhood, from a time when shops were more often empty than not. We made our clothes - my choice was knitting. The yarn we used was what we could place our hands on and old sweaters were ripped and reknit into new ones. At that time we had only limited or not at all access to patterns and knitting magazines - sometimes it was that we had a magazine for a week, they were rare and very precious. Because of that along with knitting I also learned to calculate, to knit by schematics, to adjust when needed - every skill there is to make my garments from zero. Even as a child and a teenager I enjoyed and strived at making complex lace, cables, or colorwork sweaters (sweaters always were my favorites!) - everything that required great patience and skill. Nowadays I knit both - from my imagination, designing my ideas and making patterns from them and from patterns written by well known or new designers - often to learn some new technique or garment construction. I make garments for myself, my children, my friends and it gives me great joy to do so.

My background

I have a bachelor’s degree in mathematics so numbers and complex computations are my close friends. Also having 20+years in the IT industry as a programmer, business analyst, and then project manager allows me to break down and explain complex ideas to people outside the IT. I have great experience managing my time and priorities, helping others to do the same. Managing budgets and timelines makes me feel in spreadsheets full of numbers as fish in the water. Tight project deadlines and working with people through the years showed me that I perform best under time pressure.