I'm currently working on a pattern collection of five pieces. The samples for three of them are complete, as you can see, and the fourth is on the needles. The collection is called the Affirmation collection and it's been a while in the making, mainly because of the size of that enormous blue shawl you see in the photograph, but also because I've really designed these right from the ground up.
The five pieces are a crescent scarf, a shawlette, socks, a hat and a circular shawl, and the lace designs (and colourwork for the hat) have all been designed by me too. The circular shawl idea came first, when I was going through a lot of work stress earlier in the year. I've posted before about being made redundant in the spring of this year and how it really hit me hard in terms of my self-esteem. One self-care idea that came out of that time was the idea of a large shawl of positivity that I could wrap myself up in and remind myself that I am still a good person even if my employer didn't need me any more. I had been reading articles online about designing lace stitch patterns based on motifs and based on words, and started drawing up some patterns based on as many positive and affirming words as I could think of. Four of them have become the circular shawl. One suggested itself to me as an edging rather than the body of a shawl so that has become a crescent shawl. Another told me it wanted to be socks. The shawlette, which is pretty much Faroese shaped, uses two different lace patterns from the group I designed. I wanted to include a hat but didn't want to make it a lacy one, and then I wondered if I could convert one of my uplifting words into a colourwork pattern instead of a lace pattern. The second version I tried looked like it would be great as the band of a tam, so that is what it is going to be!
The crescent scarf is currently in the test-knitting stage. The rest of the patterns will follow shortly and the entire collection should be published late this year (or possibly early next) as the Affirmation collection as an e-book and as individual patterns. I'll keep you posted!
The five pieces are a crescent scarf, a shawlette, socks, a hat and a circular shawl, and the lace designs (and colourwork for the hat) have all been designed by me too. The circular shawl idea came first, when I was going through a lot of work stress earlier in the year. I've posted before about being made redundant in the spring of this year and how it really hit me hard in terms of my self-esteem. One self-care idea that came out of that time was the idea of a large shawl of positivity that I could wrap myself up in and remind myself that I am still a good person even if my employer didn't need me any more. I had been reading articles online about designing lace stitch patterns based on motifs and based on words, and started drawing up some patterns based on as many positive and affirming words as I could think of. Four of them have become the circular shawl. One suggested itself to me as an edging rather than the body of a shawl so that has become a crescent shawl. Another told me it wanted to be socks. The shawlette, which is pretty much Faroese shaped, uses two different lace patterns from the group I designed. I wanted to include a hat but didn't want to make it a lacy one, and then I wondered if I could convert one of my uplifting words into a colourwork pattern instead of a lace pattern. The second version I tried looked like it would be great as the band of a tam, so that is what it is going to be!
The crescent scarf is currently in the test-knitting stage. The rest of the patterns will follow shortly and the entire collection should be published late this year (or possibly early next) as the Affirmation collection as an e-book and as individual patterns. I'll keep you posted!
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