Interview: Bronwyn Hahn
With over a decade of experience as a technical editor and yarn pattern designer, Bronwyn the Brave is the ultimate yarn superhero. Her x-ray vision represents an unparalleled attention to detail, spotting potential issues before they arise. Her telepathy helps her understand the unspoken needs of both the designer and the maker. With her cloak of invisibility, she makes designers look like the experts they are, and no one even has to know she was there. And with transmutation, she turns simple yarns into extraordinary, thoughtful designs.
Bronwyn edits both knit and crochet patterns and can be found at https://bronwynthebravedesigns.com/ When she is not editing, she’s crafting, reading, building LEGO projects, or dabbling in graphic design—activities that fuel her creativity and translate into her professional mastery. Join Bronwyn on her quest to conquer the fiber world, one stitch at a time.
(This interview was conducted by Sarah Walworth and has been edited for length and clarity.)
What were you doing before you became a technical editor?
I worked in insurance for several years years before my son was born, and then I quit to be a stay-at-home mom. When he was getting ready for kindergarten, I was struggling to find anything that would let me stay home while he was in school and not feel guilty about it (I know I shouldn't, but you know how that goes).
Were you a knitter or crocheter?
No, I wasn't. I was multi-craftual all my life; I was in 4-H, sewed, did cross stitch and all kinds of cuddly little crafts and stuff. My mom gave that to me—the fickleness of crafting. But I didn't start knitting until my son was just over a year old, actually 15 years ago this month! He was finally taking reliable naps and so I could get back to some crafting. It wasn't even like an intentional thing. I was planning to sew something on my sewing machine, which had been in hibernation and was broken, so I thought, okay, now what? Well, maybe I can knit something, and I just knit I learned to knit. I had been knitting about 4 years before I became a technical editor.
What made you decide to become a technical editor?
I didn't know what was a thing! I knew that they existed for magazines, but I didn't know that it was a thing for independent designers. I was friends with Paula from the Knitting Pipeline Podcast. We met some women at Stitches Midwest who mentioned another woman was revamping all of the patterns for a yarn company. It was a month before school started, and Paula knew that I was looking for something to do. And the light bulb just went off for both of us. We looked at each other like--this is your calling; this is what you need to do. It was kind of amazing.
So, I looked it up. And I think Joeli had done a tech editing course, but it wasn't an active course at the time, so she gave me some tips on how to go about it. I had four years of knitting patterns in my library, so I just started by going back to patterns that I had worked from, that maybe I had already had problems with, or ones that I enjoyed knitting. I just created the spreadsheet, figured out what I would recommend, what are good things to look at, and did the calculations. So it was just kind of a crazy little thing.
My friend Paula had already published a couple of patterns. The reason she knew that I would be good at editing was because I'd already looked at her patterns. She had a few shawl patterns for Quince and Co at that time. And so it was one of those: Hey, can you look this over? And so yeah, that's how it all started. It's crazy.
It’s neat how many of us tech editors have had a light bulb moment. It’s a little bit of serendipity, but so cool that we get hooked up with the right person at the right time and then hear about tech editing and go, where has this been all my life? This is who I am!
Yes, I've always been a nerd, like a general nerd. Everybody says I am a word nerd but I'm also a math nerd. I'm a science nerd. I like to learn about all kinds of stuff. Yes, even history now. And I hated history in school, because I had to memorize all the dates and stuff, but now I really enjoy it.
What's your workspace like?
My workspace has evolved. You can imagine over almost 11 years of editing, I've changed my process. I have always been with a laptop, and I know that's odd in the editing world. But it started with just a laptop and probably a printed pattern some of the time, but then it has evolved. In my current set up I have an L-shaped desk with a laptop on a riser, and I have TWO monitors.
Do you put the pattern on one screen and spreadsheet on the other? Or how do you make it work?
It kind of depends on how I'm working on the pattern. So if it’s the second edit, I'll have the current version on my laptop screen--it's a touchscreen, so I can draw on it with a stylus. And on my right monitor, I usually do a split screen: I have a spreadsheet on one half and the older version of the pattern. And I play spot the differences. Here’s a tip: Play the hidden object games, Where’s Waldo, or Spot the Difference cartoon if that's something that you either struggle with or that you enjoy. It will help you as an editor!
What's been the hardest part of tech editing for you?
I think the hardest part for me is understanding that every tech editor works at their own pace, and that I shouldn't compare myself to everybody else. You know in the beginning, you hear information like a sweater should take X number of hours, a shawl should take this many hours or less than an hour. And I know that some people are just like super quick. But I also know that I am able to pick up the fine details that a lot of people tend to miss. And I know that I'm really good at what I do. So just understanding that it might take me a little bit longer, but I'm worth it. I mean, I don't want to sound cocky, but I know that I do find a lot of things. I am a perfectionist, but I'm not perfect. And I know that things sneak through. Like just this morning, I got an email and said, oh my gosh, I can't believe I missed that.
We were talking earlier about seeing the forest for the trees or not seeing the forest for the trees. I think if you take a pass, like take a “trees” pass and then you take a “forest” pass. So you look at the big picture, and then you look at the tiny details--I think that is the the trick. Like one of tricks. One of the 20 million tricks.
What references or tools do you find yourself always reaching for in your work?
Excel is probably my biggest one. I created a template quite a few years ago, and I just keep adding to it. It's a living spreadsheet where I have formulas already in place. I've got a whole page where I keep track of my time by hitting just a couple of keystrokes. I have a way to quickly calculate the yardage. I have conversions with quick data entries. For some things I just I do it in my spreadsheet with all the sizes side by side, but if it's just a quick thing that I need to do, then I'll do a quick data entry. So yeah, the template is probably my biggest thing.
Stitchmastery. Of course, I didn't buy that right off the bat because it was like a $90 investment. So I couldn't justify that in the beginning, but now I couldn't live with it live without it.
Something that I keep nearby is a Franken-swatch. I have the ability to knit in my head, but every now and then I still need to get on my needles.
The most used book is Cast on, Bind off. It’s a good one, because it shows comparable cast-ons to bind-offs, which is important for smaller projects or like a scarf or something you want both ends to look the same. There's like a whole table that shows cast off cast on the bind off pairs. So if somebody gives a description in their pattern, or if it's one that I'm not really comfortable with, that I want to double check, I look at this as a great reference.
The other books that I look at are Kate Atherley’s book and JC Briar’s book on charts. And the Knitting Pattern Writing Handbook, which I am making my way through. This is this will become that classic that everybody needs to buy.
YouTube. Of course, everybody goes to YouTube, Google, Pinterest. And then I also have a few favorite thesauruses, which is interesting for a tech editor. But I still like to flag to designers that if you use this word three times in your romance, maybe find something else. And if I don't have the word right off the bat, then I will suggest freethesauraus.com and wordhippo.com.
What's the best piece of wisdom that you've heard or read lately?
I actually heard something on the radio recently, it was a weird “here's something you didn't know” kind of a thing. It was like totally dumb, but it did resonate. It was: if you're having trouble focusing on something, like math in particular, then if you just re-adjust your position and sit up straight, just the act of realigning your body can help you focus. Yeah, so I thought that was really cool. I don't know if it works, but I do feel I do that. So there's probably some sort of truth in that.
Do you have any advice for editors who are just starting out? If you could travel back in time, what wisdom would you whisper to yourself?
Okay, first, I would say don't price yourself too low. That was the worst advice I had in the beginning, because there wasn't that much information out there at the time. And there wasn't great tech editor hubs to rely on for information! Everyone just worked on their own, I think. I was trying to figure out how to how to how much to charge, and I took the advice of a friend and she was talking to her husband, and we're like okay, well, minimum wage is this much. But this is a little bit more than minimum wage. So, like, I'm going to tell you I charged $13 an hour. That's it. Yeah, I mean, it was it was pretty sad. It was more of a hobby business. Yeah. And if you've been working with somebody, you don't want to slam them with a $20 increase in your rate, so I was stuck there, and I hate begging for money from people, and it was just an embarrassing cycle.
I have finally pulled myself out of the trenches of the low rate. So that's my first thing. As somebody who had crawled out of that price, if I am charging $20 an hour and see somebody brand new come in at $30, then that whole comparison thing is is still a mind trap. You don't know how good you are until you get there. I had 11 years of experience to pull it back.
But my other my other advice would be to really consider before you buy into a program. There's so many webinars and courses and business collectives and “buy this now. You have 24 hours. It's gonna go up from $97 to $127!” Really consider if you're willing to do the work, and if you are, if it's really going to be worth it to your business. And can you afford it? Like really--can you afford it? Consider like how many hours is going to take you, how many patterns is going to take of editing or designing for that matter? How many patterns will you have to sell to offset that cost? And if it's going to be worth it, and are you actually going to do the work? They all sound magical, and seem to be the secret sauce, but maybe it wasn't so much. So I've fallen victim to a few of those.
But The Tech Editor Hub, I am all in. It’s such a great community to be a part of. I'm really thankful for it.
What's something in your business that you are happy worked out differently than you expected?
One of those business collectives I did buy into and was determined to make work was the Swatch Studio with Frenchie of Aroha Knits. And I don't remember exactly the situation, but in some of the discussions about pattern pattern design, I had kind of given some of my tech editing perspective on best practices--this is a better way to write this line of instructions or something--and after a few of those comments, Frenchie contacted me about editing a whole collection of seven patterns and to write the romance for them. So it was one of those things where you just happened to be at the right place at the right time and you open your mouth at the right time. And then from there, apparently she liked what I had to say, and I became one of her specialists for like four and a half years. So yeah, that was a lucky opportunity. It didn't take a whole lot of effort, just saying what I knew and what It was comfortable with.
What’s your favorite way to take a break from editing?
Aside from knitting and crochet, of course, I like to dabble in lots of other crafts, just kind of like one offs. My Pinterest feed is full of all kinds of weird wacky crafts and I love creating with Lego.
What are your hopes for yourself?
I don't know exactly what this looks like yet, but I like it when a designer will come to me in the design process and ask, for instance, “Is there a good way to fill in the extra partial repeats on the edge of the shawl?” and if I could help them with that. Or if, before they waste all their time writing out the formatting for the repeats or deciding on whether to use an asterisk or brackets, they come to me and give me a sample of a few rows and say, "Hey, am I on the right track here?" Then it'll save both of us a lot of time in the end.
I feel like if I could play a bigger role in that consultant position for designers, and I think I could really help designers in the long run--teaching them along the way, and helping them out in the beginning. I don't know exactly what that would look like, how I would kind of encapsulate that. But I've had a few clients come to me and say, “Hey, am I on the right track?”
I think people forget that as editors, we're not here to be patronizing and tell you did something wrong. Our job is actually to to collaborate with you.
Yeah, that's absolutely it, there is no judgement.
Want to watch it all? And find out why Bronwyn is the Brave? Click on the image to watch on YouTube!
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Thank you for being here, dear tech editors! Leave a comment below (I read each one!) ~ Sarah Walworth