Inspiration Sunday: Practicing Patience

Inspiration comes from a lot of different places.  Sometimes it is nature, another design, a question by a student, a picture in a catalog.  But once inspired turning that idea into something tangible can often be a long process.

Techniques and stitch patterns are often the beginnings of my inspiration. So a swatch often actually comes before a sketch.  I need to find out if it is going to work in the yarn I envision and what the drape of the fabric will be.  Once I have a sense of this, often it will lead how I will use the particular fabric in a design and then the sketching part begins.  Next for me is writing the pattern in all of it’s sizes.  For me this process helps me problem solve. Will it work for all sizes and is there more than one “right way” to create the object.  If so, which method is easier to communicate and/or execute. Next comes the knitting.  Sometimes this will be done by me, but often it is sent off to a contract knitter (a topic recently discussed on Marly Bird’s podcast).

If I am sending this off to a magazine, I make any edits discovered by the knitter and then I have to wait…and wait…and wait.  This is where the patience part comes in.  It is often many weeks (if not possibly months) before I see a proof the of the pattern.  And then it is usually several more weeks (sometimes months) before the magazine is published.  During that entire time, I have to keep the project under wraps.  And if I share any information, it is only allowed to be the most minimal of information in the way of descriptions and/or photos.

Such is the case for a number of skirts!  The original sample in the latest issue of Knitter’s magazine was finished at the beginning of July.  Kellie then knit the “Gwen size” version of the skirt during her trip to Europe during July.  Because several of us were making a presentation at Stitches Midwest, we were allowed to “reveal” our designs before the magazine was actually published, but this was a unique situation.  If you are interested, you can find Lattice Pyramids on Ravelry.

Having to wait 4 – 5 months before we can “talk” about what we have been doing is actually fairly typical. So one of my newest skirt designs is out in the public eye. Since July I have knit 4 others.  Three are for publication (all for upcoming Spring issues) and one that I am still trying to decide if I am going to self publish or not.  So the moral of the story, being a designer is not only about inspiration, but also about patience.