Yarn Along

Are you all sick of seeing this green yarn yet?  Surprisingly, I am not.  I’m getting more and more excited about this cardigan.  I’ve now finished the body, the sleeves and the pockets.  All that is left is the collar and finishing work.  It fits just perfectly.  It still really needs some blocking.  I’ve now done the collar 2 1/2 times and I’m about to rip it out again. 

I’m surprisingly not sick of it, though.  I was a bit discouraged with myself the last week or two in regards to this particular project, and the previous one.  I do all the math on paper, but then when I knit it up, it’s not how I saw it in my head and I have to rip back, rip back, rip back.

There was a thread on the Designer Forum on Ravelry that talked about this frustration, and it turns out, that some of the designers that I respect most piped in and said they regularly have to rip back their projects 3-5 times.  In their minds, that’s what they get paid for: messing up and tweaking the pattern to perfection so that others don’t have to make the same mistakes.

I suppose I hadn’t though of it that way before, but I’m taking on a new approach, of every mistake being so valuable. Here I thought every time I messed up “I’m no good at this.  Real designers wouldn’t have made this mistake.”  Turns out “real” designers make mistakes as often as I do.  It was very reassuring.

During bath time, I’ve been paging through a new “must have” book that several designers have recommended to me, and it’s The Knitgrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design.  It does not have anything in there about how to design, but more how the design business works.  It has chapters on contracts, and what is usually negotiable.  It talks about various ways to make money, and interviews 30 professional designers, their take on the industry, and what percentage of their income comes from books vs. teaching vs. publishing, etc.

What I’ve taken from it is each designer makes her money differently, and there’s about 1000 ways to skin a cat.  I think the interviews from various editors are very valuable to see inside their heads as to what impresses them.  Although this will be a good reference to have, and I have been learning new things, I found that it wasn’t mind blowing either.  Much of this stuff I’ve been researching on my own, so I guess you could say I wish I would have read it a year ago!

As soon as I finish this collar, I plan on casting on for the new baby’s Christmas stocking.  That, and I wanted to get a shawl pattern done.  I finally finished the design concept for it, and I’ve been aching to get it done for awhile.  It should be a quick knit, and after a big cardigan like this, I think something quick will be very welcome!

Joining my friend Ginny for her Yarn Along this week.  It’s always a beautiful thing.