Heddi Craft Designs

Last week, I participated in the Initiate Knit Design challenged hosted by Aroha Knits.  One question that came up on the Facebook group associated with the challenge was about stitch dictionaries.  I have about two linear shelf feet of stitch dictionaries at this point and I love having so many different ones to choose from.  Above, you can see the ones I used for my current design.  I ended up using elements from four out of the five for my current design.

There are books that are meant to be only stitch dictionaries, with no patterns included, and those are what I have the most of.  Some of my favorites include:

• Barbara Walker’s Stitch Treasuries– I have three of the four volumes.
• The Harmony Guides– I have all of these, including the crochet ones.
• Vogue Stitch Dictionaries– I have a couple of these and a little five volume set of small guides.
• Japanese Stitch Dictionaries– the lace one pictured above with 300 in the title is one I’ve used many times.  All the patterns are charted and it’s easy to see what you are getting.
• Nicky Epstein’s edging series– Knitting on the Edge, Knitting over the Edge, etc.

I also have a number of one volume stitch dictionaries, I tend to go for ones that have charted patterns these days.  These include German and Estonian books, some of which are still in the native language.

But there are also books like The Magic of Shetland Lace Knitting that are about shawl design and happen to have a stitch dictionary included or books that contain so many charted patterns that I can isolate and modify elements from the charts, essentially treating them like stitch dictionaries.

I’ve also found that although there is a lot of overlap between books, sometimes a pattern or a variation will appeal to me in one book even though I passed it over in another because of the yarn choice or variations in the stitch count that make the sample jump out at me.

So if you are designing, I suggest buying as many stitch dictionaries as you can.  I keep sticky note markers on the front pages of them all so I can mark interesting ideas as I go.  I’ve found them all to be worthwhile investments!

Last week I participated in the Initiate Knit Design challenge hosted by Francoise Danoy of Aroha Knits.  Frenchie not only designs but she also teaches and she hosted the five day challenge to launch her course “Manifest Your Inner Designer.”  Although I’ve been designing for over two years now, I’m always eager to learn more and participating in the challenge encouraged me to complete a shawl design that’s been knocking around in my head this month.

Day 1 was creating a mood board.  I don’t usually do this formally, though for this project I had a specific theme in mind.  My midwife, who was with me for the birth of all three of my children, passed away this month and I wanted to honor her with a shawl design.

My mood board was about images that represented birth, growth, and passage.

I don’t usually create mood boards in my own design process, so this was a stretch for me.  Often I will start with a yarn, a stitch pattern, or sometimes a garment shape, combined with a general mood or feeling I’m trying to evoke.  I cheated a bit, because when I started the challenge, I already had a yarn in mind, one stitch pattern I wanted to use, and a tentative plan for a shape.  So my images were picked with those things already in mind.

Day 2 was drawing a sketch and Day 3 was picking and swatching stitch patterns.  I will often sketch to rough out different textures within a shape, but only after I have swatched a number of potential patterns.  So on Day 2, I did make a sketch, but only after looking at a lot of stitch dictionaries.

Day 3 wasn’t really enough for swatching for me.  This is the place where I tend to spend a lot of time and my swatching went on through the next two days as well.  I tried out several patterns in isolation and then I started combining things.  For this challenge, I ripped out swatches as soon as I knew they weren’t looking right for my pattern, but I often keep on with a swatch till it’s finished and store those in binders for future reference.  To the left are some of the stitch patterns I tried and below you can see a larger swatch with the patterns combined and a border I added on to test it.  Even this doesn’t represent my final pattern because I decided to eliminate the two yarnover columns on the outside edges of the shawl.

In Day 4 we were asked to make calculations.  I eventually filled this whole page with calculations because in addition to size and number of repeats,  I had the added restriction in this design of only one skein of the yarn I wanted to use.  So I moved back and forth between my kitchen gram scale and paper, weighing my swatch, calculating the repeats, then adding the border and calculating that.  Finally, I double checked my work by using the weight of the swatch and my estimated size and making sure that they made sense.

The final part for Day 5 was to write the pattern or start knitting and write as you go.  I like to write a page of what I call “basic directions” to start.  I write out all the basic information about how I plan to make the garment so that I can follow my own directions and see if I missed anything.  I don’t format it to fit my template, and I will often pencil in details or useful notes as I work.  My design ended up being three columns wide with a generous border so the final rectangular shawl will be about 19″ by 63″

I decided to set aside the design I’m currently making the sample for in order to work on this.  My current design is a fall garment and this one is a great spring and summer design, so I think that makes sense.

Overall, it was very inspiring to see so many other people participating in the challenge and look at the other designs as they progressed over the week.  Frenchie offered daily encouragement and I think her class would be very informative for new designers.

And now I’m off to knit!

When performing improvisationally, there is a “yes and” rule that says that you accept the contributions of other in the improv and that you always add your own bit as well.  Although I sometimes believe I am the boss of my designing and in total control, other days I have to admit that the design is ultimately an improvisation between myself, the yarn, and the pattern.  The pattern or the yarn try to tell me something and I need to say, “Yes, and….”

Last week I wrote about my current design and how it wasn’t working out.  This week the old yarn is rapidly being made into a sweater (LivedIn by Alicia Plummer).  I think it is happier in its life now that it is being held double and knit on size 10.5 needles.

I swatched a new yarn, with a new stripe pattern.  Of my possible solutions last week, I implemented two of them: larger yarn (DK weight vs. fingering) and a new stripe pattern using some other stripe designs from my swatches back in November.  Now I have a very easy to memorize four row repeat for the main body of the shawl cardigan with less stitches overall and although there is still an eight row repeat in the border, it is also pretty easy to remember once you’ve done it a few times.

At my knitting group, they asked why I wasn’t just holding the old yarn double with the new stripe pattern.  Although it’s working out great held double for a sweater that’s virtually all stockinette, I wouldn’t want to deal with the chainette yarn held double with a lot of stitch manipulation because it’s a bit splitty.

If you have an iPad (or soon an Android tablet), you should know about Knit Companion.  This is a handy app that allows you to manipulate pdf knitwear patterns so that you can easily knit from the pattern, complete with row counters, magic markers that allow you to keep track of certain special stitches, and even combining charts so you don’t have to flip between pages.  Although knitters can set up a PDF pattern themselves in Knit Companion, many patterns are available that already have the set up work done for you in the kCDesigns shop!

I’m excited to announce that my patterns are now available in kCDesigns!