Scarlett17Knits
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Pattern Shop
  • About
  • Contact
  • Terms and Conditions

I love it when an idea comes together

9/9/2015

0 Comments

 
There are times when I have design ideas coming out of my ears (almost!) and other times when I struggle with what I want to design next. Last weekend I was stuck between those two places. I currently have two sock ideas, a sweater idea, a shawl idea and a jewellery idea, all percolating in my head and I couldn't decide which one I was most excited about to put first on my to-do list.

However, I also had a niggling thought that I wanted four stray balls of DK out of my stash. I don't like throwing away entire balls of yarn. If it's something I know I really won't use I might give it to charity, or I'll use it up making charity squares, but these were balls of yarn that I wanted to use myself. I just couldn't think what to do with them. There's a limit to what you can make with a single 50g ball of DK, even if it is soft squishy merino in a pretty colour!

I think the fates must have been on my side, though, because browsing online I saw three unrelated threads on Ravelry that, put together, became the perfect idea for those stray stash yarns.

The first one was a Stashdown Challenge to try to use your entire stash over the next 18 months. If I needed one last push to use up those four DK orphans, this was it.
The second one was a call for pattern submissions for homeware items. I have never designed a homeware item. It's not something that's even crossed my mind, probably because they aren't something I tend to knit for myself.
The third one was a Design Challenge to design a pillow incorporating a cabled texture. 
Finally all the pieces fell into place. I had been browsing through a stitch dictionary looking for a background for (yet another) sock pattern, and kept coming back to a braided cable stitch pattern. Too complicated for socks, so not what I was looking for, but the stitch itself really appeals to me. And then into my mind popped a picture of the pillow I would design using the DK yarn, including the cabled stitch pattern, which I might submit to the pattern call. (Or I might just decide to release the pattern myself. Or not!)
Picture
After working on my last design, which used lace weight, this yarn is knitting up at lightning speed! And it's looking just how I imagined it. I did need to do a bit of quick-and-dirty maths on the fly, just to make sure that I would have enough yarn to make the pillow the right size to fit a standard size insert. After all, there's no point in designing a cushion cover to fit a cushion that you can't get, nor did I really want to have to buy more yarn since the first inspiration for this design was the idea of getting this yarn out of my stash!
Three more inches of work and then there's just the sewing up to do. And then comes the hardest part for me - trying to decide whether or not to submit it to the yarn company pattern call.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    About me

    I love to knit, to design patterns and to talk about knitting!

    Archives

    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    July 2020
    June 2020
    March 2020
    November 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.