Design Patterns v/s Experience

While reading through TestNG and comparing it with JUnit, it is obvious that TestNG is far simpler to use and at first glance looks to be designed better (or has more features). Note I haven’t written a single TestNG test yet.
And I remembered reading , when people complained about the limitations of JUnit that JUnit was designed as a framework that could be extended. And how JUnit had used all sorts of design patterns.
Which leads us to Design Patterns v/s Experience question. I do not suggest these two are mutually exclusive. The comparison of JUnit and TestNG is not strictly fair, and neither is this a feature by feature comparison, nor an indictment of design pattern approaches. Its simply that having JUnit (and its varied extensions around) allowed Cedric to create a better framework. Like not having to implement a class or interface for your tests. The different ways of running setup (as opposed to the design pattern used by Gamma and co.) . And while a catalog of Design Patterns exist, how do you quantify or catalog the Experience that allows you to select the correct Design Pattern?
Experience also teaches you when design patterns need not be used. (oh yes there are cases, but I leave that for a separate entry).
And if you had to choose a candidate with Design patterns on his CV(All candidates know factory,singleton,value object, dao and session façade) or one who seemed to have the experience, choose the guy with experience (This has nothing to do with 6 yrs experience and no DP in CV!)