movie marathons don’t hurt knitting progress
I’m always working on some project or another, and most weeks I talk about what I’m working on Wednesdays as part of Tami’s WIP Wednesday project. You can see past WIP Wednesdays … right this way.
When I’m working on a long project or a semi-monotonous* project, I get disheartened when it gets harder to see progress. And I bet I’m not the only one, right?
*not necessarily monotonous in a bad way, but a project that is not snap of the fingers instant, and involves lots of one simple stitch (such as garter stitch shawls).
I use a couple tricks to keep myself motivated, the easiest and most reliable one being to keep visual track of my progress using row markers.
It’s really simple and very motivating.
So if I’m feeling unmotivated or trying to knit fast on a deadline, when I sit down to knit I’ll place a row marker in the row I’m starting on. This way as I knit, I know exactly where I started and as I knit I try to run away from the marker.
The next day, I’ll place a new row marker in the row I’m starting on, and try to knit more than I did the day before. (Of course, some days I knit less, but it’s only knitting, so it’s all good.)
Combining this with continually shortening rows is awesome, because it makes you feel super speedy.
(Movie marathons also help.)
This was part of Tami’s WIP Wednesday project. If you’d like more WIP Wednesday posts, from other bloggers, visit Tami’s blog.
even complicated projects usually start simply
Unfortunately complicated projects don’t generally fall out of your brain fully formed.
It usually starts with an outline, or a sketch, a rough approximation. There’s a reason painters sketch, novelists outline, and knitters swatch.
Sketches, outlines and swatches are all places to play and experiment, to solve problems and work out contingencies, with low expectations, and little investment.
I’ve talked about my love affair with swatching before, but I also “sketch” for many of my knitting design projects.
I open up my charting software and draw out what I want the design to look like, using yarn-overs and decreases, kind of like a proto-chart . Then I refine and tweak, refine and tweak, until I’m happy with the chart, and I start knitting. (This tweaking is what turns the initial sketch into the final chart.)
This process of sketching, then tweaking and refining, isn’t just for knitwear or pattern designing. The execution is different, but the process is the same.
For example, the map for Shawl Geometry III, started as hand drawn sketches on a piece of paper. Actually, the entire book started as handwritten scribbles on graph paper.
Which then turned into hand drawn scribbled schematics on top of typed text.
The complete map started as kind of a total mess. But drawing these hand messy maps served the purpose of getting the idea out of my head and onto paper.
Getting something out of my head is the first step towards being able to put an idea down and walking away. Walking away from an idea allows your brain to quietly munch and mull on all of the information you have, and come up with creative solutions to whatever problem you’re running into.
It turned out that the key to creating this map, was to have a central hub around the square and the right triangle, then have all of the longer paths looping around the outside of this central hub.
So if you look at the map closely, you’ll see that the center out square, and the right triangle (the two most interconnected shapes) are right at the center of the map, with half a dozen lines leading away from either of them.
Then if you look at the outsides of the map, you’ll see that’s where the shapes that are connected to two or three other shapes are, such as the crescents, and the half circles.
This rather simple idea of a hub, with longer paths looping around the outside, meant that I could go into illustrator and sketch out the final version of the map. Other than lots of small annoying tweaks* here and there, that was it.
*the tweaks that are a total pain in the butt to do, but that make the final product look so much better. Details matter.
It’s a crazy complicated map. That started as some pen scribbles.
Big complicated projects usually involve:
an idea
a sketch/outline/draft/plan/swatch
messing about with said sketch/outline/draft/plan/swatch
a period of thinking about anything else a.k.a. brain munching time
a final draft/sketch
rearranging
tweaking
stupid annoying tweaking
stop tweaking (it will never be perfect, but at some point it will be damn good)
ta-da! a finished a big complicated project. yay you!
What crazy project are you working on? Or are thinking about embarking on?
Announce! Announce! You can get Shawl Geometry III (the book that explains the map) here.
a good smack over the head
How do you choose colors for your knitting projects?
Choosing colors and color combinations that look good and that appeal to you is tricky. Developing your sense of color takes time and effort. But then learning to trust your color sense usually takes a smack over the head or two.
For me, Anwar was a huge lesson in following my gut when it comes to choosing colors.
The initial idea for the shawl came about when Sharon contacted me about designing a shawl for a Spin & Knit-a-Long (SKAL) in the Spin a Shawl Ravelry group. The idea was to create a circular shawl similar to Eirwen for a single ply lace weight yarn that the group members could spin yarn for and then knit together as a group.
We came up with the idea of doing a color sequence that would allow the spinners to spin color A, then start knitting, as they continued to spin color B. So I did a block of color A, one by one stripes of colors A + B, then a block of color B.
When I went down to my LYS looking for yarn I was looking for a single ply lace weight yarn that came in a good color combination. The fact that it needed to be a single made for a rather limited selection of yarns. There was Malabrigo lace, and Madelinetosh Prairie, and that was basically it, and neither of them had a huge color selection in stock. Which totally makes sense, not many people come in looking for lace weight singles.
So I pulled out all the colors they had, and immediately grabbed the Malabrigo lace in Periwinkle and Sauterne. I thought they were intriguing but kind of weird together, so I set them aside and kept looking.
I spent maybe an hour putting various combinations together, with help and impute and lots of cooks in the kitchen. There were some other nice combinations, but none that really popped, and none that were as intriguing as the Periwinkle and Sauterne.
So I took two skeins of each color home, and put the skeins on my desk so I could look at them and think about it, and keep looking for different yarn.
The reason I think it was so hard to find a combination that worked for this shawl was the color set up. Remember we decided a block of color A, one by one stripes of colors A + B, then a block of color B. This was so that the spinners could start knitting before they were fully done spinning.
But this meant that the color combination had to be made up of colors that 1. could stand on their own as their own large blocks of color, 2. could work together for the stripes, and 3. not have one block of color overpower the other.
I poked around online but I couldn’t find anything, and I still couldn’t find anything, and I still, still couldn’t find anything. Eventually I had to start knitting (pro tip: you can’t finish a project you haven’t started.)
So I wound the yellow and started knitting. Still not sure, and still looking for something that could maybe take the place of the Periwinkle. I still didn’t find anything.
Eventually I came to the point where I had to start the Periwinkle. So I started. And it worked.
It worked really well. And I was kind of shocked.
The entire time I was looking at color combinations, I kept coming up with the feeling of “I’m not sure the shawl is this (the Periwinkle and Sauterne), but I know it’s not that (whatever combination I was looking at)” which, when you’re designing a shawl that’s going to take hours and hours of work isn’t exactly the feeling you want. I’m a lot more comfortable with the feeling of “YES this!” or even a more subdued and subtle and certain “this is right.”
The whole “I’m not sure about this combination, but it seems like the best there is, and I can’t seem to let go of it” was a bit freaky, but turned into an re-affirmation in trusting my own color sense, over anyone else’s. And maybe more importantly trusting myself over my own ideas of what colors “should” or “shouldn’t” look good together.
I still don’t know why this combination works, and part of me still says they shouldn’t work together, and they’re kind of weird colors, that on a bad day might look a bit like easter egg barf. But when I look at Anwar I know the combination works and they’re the right colors for the pattern, even though they are unexpected, and maybe even a little ugly, but in a totally fantastic way.
