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Diving into Craftsy

I’ve just signed up for a Craftsy class!  I noticed that they’re having a sale this weekend for Black Friday, where you can sign up for courses for half price.  (Thanks, Twitter!)  So, I followed the link to see what they offered.

Well, what do you know?  They had a class that looked like it would answer some of my questions.  I’d love to start designing sweaters, but I was feeling under qualified.  I don’t want to design garments that won’t fit everyone, but how could I possibly test knit every single sweater size before publishing a pattern?  As much as I love knitting, I don’t have the time or the yarn budget.  But I also refuse to publish patterns that I’m not proud of.

Amazingly, there’s a class currently being offered called Sizing Knitwear Patterns.  How perfect is that?!?  So, I signed up.

There are lots of other interesting knitting classes being offered, as well.  As far as I can tell, all of them are online video courses, in which you can ask the instructor as many questions as you want.  Your video links never expire, so you can take your time watching them.  There are discussion forums for your class.  You can even make video notes.

(I’m not sure what that means yet, but I’ll find out soon.  I think it means I can bookmark bits of video that I want to go back to later and make notes about them.  Sounds neat, eh?)

While I was there, I figured I’d also look into the Craftsy Affiliate Program.  Now that aknitica is self hosted, I can add links to sites I find useful in my knitting life so I can share them with everyone.  As a happy bonus, I get a bit of commission from them occasionally, which should help fund my yarn sample purchases and website fees.  It turns out that Craftsy has a really incredible user-friendly program for affiliates.  (You’ll notice I have some banner ads at the side and bottom of the site now.  I added the ones I found most interesting, although right now, they’re all in their Holiday mode!)  If you have your own website, you can Join Craftsy’s Affiliate Program Today too, if you like.

I was surprised to get an added bonus from them when I got my approval email.  I get to sign up for one of their classes, for free!  haha

But I think what I’ll do is sign up for the Sizing Knitwear Patterns‘ sister course, the Pattern Writing for Knitters Online Knitting Class.  Maybe it will help me take my patterns to a whole new level of awesomeness.  That’s always a good thing.

And here’s another one that would be perfect for my Knitting Guild, since our annual knitting challenge’s theme is shawls this year.  There’s actually a Knit Shawls Class that promises to help you master lace techniques.  Darn it, now I wish I could take it, too.  Too much to do, too little time.  I so completely love taking knitting classes.

Online Knitting Class

Now, to carve out some quiet minutes to watch my videos.   In a house full of homeschooled children.  It’s a good thing there’s no time limit!  (And hey, maybe they’ll learn something.  Mwahaha….)

Have you every taken an online class?  How did it go?

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[box]Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. But I only talk about things that actually interest me, that I hope could benefit my readers, as well.  Regardless of whether or not I make money from them.[/box]