A design story – pt1

Posted on | November 12, 2009 | 18 Comments

Tonight I’m sitting here making good on my Autumn Manifesto (wrapped in a family sweater, drinking tea), feeling sleepy from all the rain we’ve had this week & satisfied from recently reaching a final milestone on a long-lingering project. Since this project is in it’s final stages – and much closer to finally being able to share with you all, I thought I would go back in time a bit and share some of the process before the design comes out.

Back in the spring of 2007, I was still a new knitter and newer blogger – but I had some ideas in my head and wanted to see if I could make them work. I had the good fortune to run into some other knit-bloggers who were starting their own design efforts and we did a few design challenges, bouncing around ideas and offering feedback and encouragement. It was a very good thing and had my wheels turning constantly, so excited about ideas and possibilities and as a result I was just getting ready to put out my first pattern. Tad and I were on our way to Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival (MDSW), and in a fit of inspiration fueled by my excitement, I was sketching furiously all over the vendor list I had printed out.

I’m a fantastically awfully sketcher. Ah well. At least they jog my mind, where they look much prettier.

Several of the sketches/scratches on this page were multi-color ideas. I had been dreaming of colorwork all winter long and had attempted my first couple of projects (my ill-fated Anemoi mittens, and first attempt at Chuck’s Cabled Socks). And I had seen a particular sweater in Vogue Knitting earlier in the year that had gotten me thinking about working a fair isle or colorwork sweater sideways.

Sandi Posser's Fair Ilsle Cardigan - Vogue Knitting, Winter 2006/2007

I wanted a beautiful multi-colored sweater, like all the gorgeous Venezia’s I had seen (Eunny Jang phase? Yes!) But I knew with my extremely short and very curvy torso that this might be difficult to carry off – the  traditional sideways stripes of pattern and color seemed not to be such a good or flattering idea for me. The sweater above set off a little lightbulb for me – vertical stripes would work! My knitting brain thought on this idea for some time, and on that piece of paper ideas finally started popping out. (I’m starting to notice that this is the way my brain works – sometimes with technique as well as inspiration. As a new knitter I sat on the concept of circular knitting/DPN’s for at least a week until it clicked, then I was off!) I didn’t have the knowledge or experience – nor were any of these ideas fully formed enough to pursue buying yarn at MDSW that weekend, but I did do some looking – and I got excited about a couple of the ideas on that page and began to flesh them out a bit more in my head and on paper. And, did I mention? It so happens that this MDSW is the one at which I met Gryphon.

I came home and sketched some more, and then ordered some yarn to start some colorwork dreaming. I’d been infatuated with Green Mountain Spinnery and how they do things for some time but had yet to actually try their yarns, and so that seemed like a good place to start. But it was a few more months before I would act on any of these sketches as I finished up my first design and started my second (which Gryphon, after joining our group of Design Workshop folks saw and picked up – it became Chrysalis). When I knew I’d be making a trip north toward the end of the summer, I did some more sketching and planning – I wanted to be able to pick up the yarn in Vermont in person.  I played with color blocking in Excel, the basis was a graphic scrollwork backdrop on a website I had seen (no memory of where at this point unfortunately!) I played with it until I felt it would work up ok sideways, and would tile nicely.  When we got on the road to New England, much of the drive was spent swatching.   I chose the colors for these first attempts in sequence. Brown, I love brown, that’s the backdrop. I love brown with Turquoise or Teal… Yellow is a good opposite on the color wheel, snag a few lighter shades of the yellow and teal/blue, and start playing. There wasn’t a real method to my process at this point – after reading Julia’s recent post about colorwork, I think I would go about things a little more methodically/thoughtfully in the future, and it might take less time for me to come up with something that I like!

My first attempts were a little rough, but enough to give me an idea of how the colors worked together:

I settled on this combination:

And picked up enough yarn (this is Cotton Comfort, BTW) for the concept during the trip (on a somehow unblogged, awesome visit to Green Mountain Spinnery)

And back at home I did some fine tuning until I was happy…

To be continued!

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Now playing: Hem – Betting On Trains
via FoxyTunes

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