The Making of a Scarf

I thought I would write a post a bit about my design process.  I know something like a scarf looks simple, but with many designers, “just a scarf” has quite a bit of thought behind it.  This is the story of my recently released “Falme” cowl.

I have longed to be published in Quince and Co’s annual “Scarves” publication, mostly because I love their yarn so much, and I love the story behind their company, and I love their price, and I love their style.  There’s just so much to love.  I wanted to send in some ideas last year, but the deadlines would have been so close to Ingrid’s birth that I thought it might be unwise.  This year, I was determined to get  a design in.

(Pictures on my swatch board were a bonus from my previous orders from Alicia Paulson.  I find them very inspirational!  I often put cards up here, swatches from old projects, swatches from projects that aren’t cast on yet, or perhaps will never be cast on.  Really, it’s spreading my brain out on a board, in an effort to keep the inspiration going.)

Just before the call for scarf submissions came out,  I got some of Quince’s Owl in my hands.  I wanted to make a sweater for myself and started swatching a few stitch patterns with those sketches in mind, and just getting to know how the yarn behaved.  It was different than I had anticipated actually, in many ways but not in a bad way.  When I blocked my swatch it bloomed, but not in a frizzy way, and softened very nicely.  After blocking, I realized that the yarn would be perfect for a poncho design I had sketched in my book, so I started swatching for that too.  Then I couldn’t decide which design this particular batch of yarn was to go towards: the sweater or poncho, so the yarn got put on the back burner as I mused.

That’s when Quince’s call for “Scarves” submissions came out.  I immediately went through my sketch book only to find out I had no scarves designs.  Lots of sweaters/cardigans, and lots of fingerless gloves  of all things, but no scarves.  So I went through my play-around swatches one by one, to think over some of the stitch patterns that have been stuck in my brain.

An old swatch I made for a baby dress idea that I eventually scrapped stood out among the rest.

So using the old swatch as a jumping off point.  I started playing with the idea of removing some of the repeats of the textured stitches in the stitch pattern used, and worked out this new swatch (see below) which I used for my submission.

I could have easily used their Lark yarn as well, and debated about that.  However, Owl is their newest line, and doesn’t nearly have enough patterns to do it justice.  Plus, my desire in this design was to really think about texture, and the Owl yarn has such a lovely twist to it;  it would just make the stitch work.  I played around with the name for the cowl as well.  I ended up googling “fading” along with many other words in Norwegian, and “Falme” was the word given for the verb: “to fade.”

I also made another sketch and swatch for a completely different scarf design using Quince’s chickadee yarn.  However, the swatch didn’t turn out at all as I wanted it to, and I scrapped the idea completely and just prepared the submission using this one design.  Maybe I’ll get that idea sorted out down the road.

The next step was sending in my idea and waiting.  I heard back that they accepted my design and I should expect some yarn in the mail and more details.

They sent me the Owl yarn in the color “Yucca” which is just the most perfect soft yellow.  I was hoping for a lighter color like this, as I wrote them in my proposal and so this made me happy.  I immediately went over my notes and cast on the necessary stitches.

About 4 inches in to the cowl, I had the mistake of thinking to myself “Wow!  I’ve made it 4 inches in this cowl and haven’t had to rip back at all yet!”  About 30 minutes later I moved to the next phase of the texture fading and realized I had accidentally cast on 4 stitches less than what I should have.  Should I just make 4 stitches spread out over the many and call it good?  But it would disrupt the pattern and how would that work?  Would anyone notice?  I decided that I would notice, and I wasn’t going to put my best foot forward with a new company with a sloppy job, and I started over.

I got about 6 inches into the cowl again, when I took a hard look at how the stitch pattern was working.    I liked the swatch, but in the bigger piece one section looked more like a stripe than a gradual fade.  My math was right, and the swatch looked fine, but this product in my hands was just too blunt.  So I ripped back about 3 inches and reworked the textural fading, taking notes of the changes I made as I went along.

Then I got close to the end of the whole project and realized I’d have to break into the 4th skein to get about 10 yards more in the bind off row.  Since that is a pet peeve of mine to have a pattern where it just so barely dips into one of the skeins, I ripped back, and sent a quick email to the company asking if they minded if the cowl was an inch or so shorter than I had promised, and they had no problem.  So I reworked the fading for a little less depth.

After that reworking, I didn’t like the actual amount of stockinette stitch I had left on the top.  It was the original amount of plain stockinette that I had in my notes, but in the larger sample form it felt like an afterthought and not fluid with the rest of the design.  When I shortened the depth, the design had this “lopped off” feel to me.  I cast off the completed cowl to get a better feel, and asked 2 friends what they thought.  They both raved that it was gorgeous.  I did like it, but the top part was bugging me.

This was all going on last fall.  As I pondered whether or not the project was done, Knut came in from harvest one night around midnight, and asked how the cowl was coming.  We get most of our catching up in harvest time done around the midnight hour.  I showed him the “finished” cowl.  He said he thought it was fine the way it was, but he could tell from my face that it wasn’t the project I had in my head.  Yes, that was it exactly.  It was very nice, but not exactly my vision.

So reluctantly, I ripped back a painful 6 inches or so, reworked some of the fading to fade faster, yet still fluidly, and made the stockinette portion on top more significant to balance out the bottom better.  Regrettably, the last 2 rows containing the purl knot stitches were redone a few times.  Fortunately for me, this “Owl” yarn could take the ripping-back-beating with grace.

The end result was this:

It was perfect.  I was so glad I stuck to the original vision, and never said, “good enough” until I was content.  Granted, I’m pretty sure many designers rip out their stuff less than I do.  Then again, I’ve heard many of them say the same thing!

It was then shipped off to Quince, where they styled and photographed it.  I sent the files of my written pattern to their wonderful tech editor who made it all make sense.