Books

About a month ago I went  a little wild on Amazon and ordered a few things I’ve had my eye on for quite a while. Well, let’s just say I ordered 5 books at midnight one night when Ty was on a business trip. I think the word “impulse” covers it adequately. Now, I don’t own that many knitting books, at least in comparison to how much yarn I have, and several of the more traditional pattern books I own were either very early purchases from when I was just learning, or gifts. As of a month ago, this was my entire knitting book library.

I’d say for the last four years or so, my knitting book purchases have been of a single mind, which is just further demonstrated by the ones I recently bought.

Most of my knitting books have been purchased with the idea of becoming a knitwear designer in mind. And even when I was just learning to knit I was designing more than following patterns. The most used books in my library have definitely been the Harmony stitch dictionaries. You might not be able to see it, but they each have at least 20 sticky notes in them.

I haven’t read them all, but I know that part of doing anything well is having good resources. The new books are some of the books I’ve seen recommended for designers over and over again. I know that my library will continue to grow, but I think I’ve got a pretty good foundation to start on. I hope that with these books at my back, I’ll have the knowledge, motivation, and inspiration to do what I love: design.

Now excuse me, but I’ve got some reading to do.

Eight Feet Tall

Ok guys, I’m going to do my best not to hate on other designers, but for the love of knitting who actually thinks my torso is 19 inches long? The red, top-down sweater that I have been plugging away at on size 1.5 needles was going great and I finally got to the pockets, which was the most excitement I’d had since I split stitches off for the sleeves. So there I was, blissfully knitting away at knit night when I decided that maybe I wanted to try the sweater on, see how it was progressing since last time. That’s when I realized that the top of the pocket opening was at my hips, and the sweater is supposed to fall at just below hip level.

Well, the designer had helpfully provided garment measurements for all sizes, and for my size, from underarm to the bottom of the sweater, it’s supposed to be 19 inches. I might be a bit short, and have a smaller torso to leg proportion, but there is no way the average woman of my sweater size has 19 inches where the pattern wants them to. And even more damning is that the largest size is supposed to have 21 inches from underarm to the bottom of the sweater, that’d be a dress. Unless of course, that person were eight feet tall.

As you know, I took Ysolda’s VK Live class about sweater pattern grading (sizing), and one of the first exercises we did was to take a cutout of a small sized sweater, and turn it into a large sized sweater by cutting and adding space (I realize this sounds confusing, it confused us too until we actually did it). But the one place that you don’t need to add much for larger sizes is the length. Just because people get wider does not mean that people grow taller, and as Ysolda pounded into our heads, people are not eight feet tall, at least none that she’s ever met.

This sweater will get finished eventually, but before that you’ll get to see a few new FOs, and 12 old ones (yes, I actually started writing up my sock summaries).

Happy knitting!

Moving Forward

I was listening to the latest Subway Knits podcast on my way home on Friday, Maria’s interview with Alana Dakos, when I had a bit of an epiphany. One of Maria’s standard questions in her interviews with designers is what advice they would give budding designers or small business owners. Alana began with the general answer about if you work hard you can accomplish anything, which I completely agree with, but then she said if you have a dream of being something, “just set that goal, and don’t give up.” That’s when it hit me. I’ve thought about being a designer for years, when I started this blog it was a way of documenting patterns I made for myself, I’ve talked to many people about becoming a ‘real’ designer, I’ve even made some decent effort it pattern writing, photography, self-publishing, etc. But I’ve always thought that being a knitwear designer was something that would be nice if it happened, but probably wouldn’t, as if it might spontaneously happen to me. I’ve thought that if one day I just woke up a designer, I would enjoy it.

Being a designer has never been a goal for me.

That might seem like a fine line to you, but even in the last two days since I’ve made this mental distinction, I feel better about a lot of things. And writing this now, I’m beginning to realize that maybe my issue with knitting and school isn’t that I’ve lost my motivation as a whole, but that my list of goals is tragically empty. Grad school has been a goal for many years, and I’ve fought for it every step of the way. I made sure that I could get to this point, so that I could be a scientist and do everything that came with it. Now that I’ve started school though,  “get to grad school” was checked off, and “be a scientist” has practically been erased off with just the ghost of the text remaining, and I’ve been struggling to find reasons to write it back in. I would like to, but the hurdles for it to get on the list are bigger now than they were six years ago.

Being a designer though, that’s just never made it on. It’s seemed like a silly little fantasy of mine. Now that I’ve switched it to the Goal category it feels like it’s a grown-up decision, something worth fighting for.

Likely, this won’t noticeably change anything in my life. But it feels like someone’s thrown me a life preserver, I don’t have to waste all of my effort treading water, I can finally push forward, toward that little patch of land that’s just shown up on the horizon.

Vogue Knitting Live

This was my second year attending Vogue Knitting Live, and let’s just say that if the increase in awesome is a trend, I’m super excited for next year. I took two classes this time, one of which was a double session. On Friday afternoon I learned about the Icelandic tradition of knitting colorwork in the round and steeking after to make a cardigan from Ragga Eiríksdóttir. It was honestly really nice to have someone (metaphorically) holding my hand as I cut through my precious knitting. Although Ragga’s crocheted edging is really only sufficient for the extraordinarily velcro-like Icelandic yarn Lopi, her class has definitely given me the confidence to tackle steeking on a real project, with a machine stitched seam of course.

Before

During

After

After this class I wandered around the Marketplace preview a bit with SubwayKnits, scoping out everything I might want to purchase on Saturday (which was everything). Saturday I had a morning and afternoon session with Ysolda Teague, learning all about sizing sweater patterns for multiple sizes. Excel was opened, math was used, logic problems were explained. Let’s just say I learned a lot, and hopefully sometime soon you’ll be seeing some real-life sweater patterns designed by yours truly.

Ysolda!

Math, math, math

In between my Saturday classes, I did a second (and a third) go round of the Marketplace and managed to limit myself to two skeins from two dyers that are new to my stash. Although I’ve seen Neighborhood Fiber Co. back when I was in DC, I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never made a purchase. Then there’s Jill Draper Makes Stuff, Jill uses all different breeds of sheep, not just the ubiquitous Merino. So of course I can’t wait to try out the Cormo I snagged from her, it’s definitely going to be a hat for me, it got so cold out over the weekend!

Happy Knitting!

Right Between the Eyes

It’s strange how sometimes when you’ve been feeling so uninspired and underwhelmed by life, an idea just hits you right between the eyes. My enthusiasm this past month toward my knitting has been a little lacking. The July socks were finished Monday (except for the ends), I’ve been plodding on some of my old designs, and I’ve only been mildly interested in knitting in general. I’m sure a lot of this has to do with my anxiety over our move to New York and the start of school soon after.

Then, out of the blue, I started having images of ribbing. It seemed a little odd to be thinking up various twisted stitch ribbing ideas without a garment, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re me. And I guess there was actually a garment idea to go with, specifically, the cardigan I’ve been thinking of for some Tosh Sport  in the Candlewick colorway that I bought a while back. So, not being able to start either the August socks or my Ravellenic Games shawl yet, I did a little swatch and a sketch for the cardigan. It will be secret for now, but here’s a bit of a sneak peak.

And here’s another sneak peak of my Ravellenic yarn from Wandering Wool!

More soon.

Happy Knitting!