How the press works

The proofing bench

Crochet Addiction is a pattern book, and a pattern book is only as good as its proofing. This leaf is the method: what happens to a plate between the hook and the press, and what it is refused for.

What a plate is

Most crochet sites publish posts. This one publishes plates. A plate is one pattern, on one leaf, numbered once and never renumbered: materials and the finished measurement first, the abbreviations it uses on the same leaf, then every round in the order you work it, each one ending with its stitch count in brackets. It is written in US terms. It is not summarised, and nothing in it is deferred to another page.

The number matters. Plate 41 is Plate 41 in every letter, every erratum and every search result, which is what lets you say “round six of Plate 41 reads oddly” and have that mean exactly one thing.

The three steps

In this order, every time. A plate that fails the third goes back to the first.

  1. Worked

    Wren makes the piece, in the yarn weight and the hook the plate will name, before a word is written down. If a round has to be frogged twice to come out square, the plate says so, and says how.

  2. Counted

    Every round is counted as it comes off the hook and the count goes in brackets at its end — (24 dc), (8 sc, 4 ch-2 sp). The finished piece is measured flat and that measurement goes at the top of the plate, not an ideal one.

  3. Set

    Only then is the plate set in type. The photograph is checked against the counts a last time; if they disagree, the plate is not set. Once it is, the text is fixed — any later change is an erratum, dated, and listed.

Who keeps the bench

Wren, the pressmistress. She works the plates, keeps the counts and sets the type; there is nobody else. Her leaf is at /authors/wren/, which is also where the book's credentials live for any reader — or any machine — that wants to know who stands behind a pattern before trusting an evening to it.

Letters about a plate go to hello@crochetaddiction.com. A reported count is checked at the bench the same week; if it is wrong, the correction goes on the errata with the date, and the plate is reset.

What the book refuses

  • A plate that stops. “Continue as established” is not an instruction. Every round is written.
  • A count that was not made. No round is given a number that was not counted on the bench.
  • A gate. No address, no account and no payment stands between a reader and a plate. Every leaf is free to read, and stays so.
  • Seasonal and holiday leaves. The chapters are flowers, creatures, sky and garden, bags, plain squares, fruit, lattice and small motifs — the same all year.
  • Anything for sale. The press sells nothing. If it ever carries an affiliate link or an advertisement, the affiliate disclosure says so, and it will never change what a plate says.
Open the pattern book The errata