Drowning in WIPs

I just thought I would post this, so you can all laugh at me.  I am up to my eyeballs.  First, there is the sweater of doom:

It is actually mostly done, but I still have to grade the pattern, which is pretty much the bane of my existance right now.  Then there's the sock design for Knit Picks:

A series of embarrassing math errors happened in this one.  The math errors are fixed, but with all the frogging I had to do, I feel like I wasted a lot of time.  Then there's the couch quilt:

This one is completely done, except that I don't have any batting, and no money to buy batting until next week at the earliest.  I even made the binding strip.  There is literally nothing more I can do on this until I manage to aquire some batting.  So of course I started another quilt:

This is square one of thirty six for a bed quilt for me.  I have a long way to go.  And of course there's my knitting in the car project:

A pair of plain jane two at a time socks.  I don't get how two at a time is faster than one at a time.  I'm pretty sure that I, at least, am slower this way.  So yes, doomed.  Up to my eyeballs.  Also, my thumb still hurts from when I sliced it making dinner the other day.  Go, me!

Everybody needs an editor

My secret sweater has just entered testing, which has gotten me to thinking about the whole design process.  In my pre-yarn life, I started as an editor of translations.  Well, before that I was a translator, but that's fairly irrelevant.  Any editor will tell you, everybody needs an editor.  I gather that a lot of folks think that's just us defending our jobs, but it's not.  See, my brain does not work the way your brain does.  What I may think is perfectly clear may be confusing to you.  I may miss that I misspelled "biology" as "boilogy" even though I reread my draft fifteen times.  And in design, this is, in large part, where pattern testers come in.  Now, testers are not and should not be expected to be tech editors or copy editors, altho they will often catch the same kind of mistakes.  But a test crocheter can tell me if my sweater actually fits a ten year old.  I don't have the time (or yarn!) to make every one of my patterns in every available size, and even if I did, I probably wouldn't have a model to test the sizes on.  I have done so many crochet yokes that they are automatic to me, so sometimes I forget to say in my pattern where, exactly, the fsc bridge should attach... and you bet testers catch crap like that!  So to all my testers, past, present, and future, a hearty thank you... I'm going to do my best to not need you any more, but boy do I appreciate your help!