Intro to Designing

Yeesh, I am terrible at blogging. Sorry. I have resolved to do better.

And I mean that! I made several resolutions this year in the general vein of most people's resolutions - stay fit, eat more veggies, etc. But two of my resolutions were specific to my knitterly self - challenges that seem daunting and even perhaps a little tedious, but which I believe will pay off in so many ways if I can really stick with them!

One - I will stop ignoring this blog. Its little bookmark toolbar button taunts me, but I so often feel that I have nothing interesting to contribute, and even if I do, I've already written it all on some project page on Ravelry, or gone into lengths on Facebook, and I don't want to hash it all over again. But I so admire and adore those women who have truly found their home in the loving, knitwear-ensconced arms of their blog readers. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee! Rachael Herron! Kim Werker! I know I can make this blog into something better. Something not utterly forgettable.

Two, and this is where the rewards involve actual money (needles crossed!), I will publish a pattern. An actual, original design by yours truly. I will be a real designer.  I have dreamed of designing for years but I'm such a neurotic perfectionist that I could never bring myself to actually ask for money for anything I'd just improvised.  But, I've been a stay-at-home-mom now for over a year and a half, and failing repeatedly at selling handknit sweaters and scarves and hats, not because they're bad but frankly because they'e too good, and therefore too expensive for anyone who might stumble across my dinky little Etsy shop.  If I can make a pattern, a pattern that people love and lust after and will happily pay even $5 for, the return on my time and labors will be SO much more.

For over a month now, I have been working on a sweater for my daughter, with the intention from the get-go that this would be my first non-free pattern published on Ravelry. I took extensive notes, charted like a woman possessed, and did ALL THE MATH. SO MUCH MATH. I finally finished the sweater - what was supposed to be a sweater dress but turned out merely tunic-length - this week, blocked it, and took the niblet out into the glorious Oregon January sunshine, and took nearly a hundred photos.

Meanwhile, I have spent hours and hours (I didn't even keep track of how many) writing the pattern to a publishable polish. Creating the charts in a spreadsheet, turning them into images that could be popped into the pattern document. Adding in the photos of niblet in her new sweater. And then EVEN MORE MATH to make a larger sized version, since I feel like a jerkface charging for a pattern that only comes in one size.

And now it's been put out there in my pattern testing group on Ravelry for beta knitting and initial feedback. I am so nervous it's making me kind of ill. What if everyone thinks my style of pattern writing is totally incomprehensible?! I've never written down knitting instructions for someone who didn't live inside my brain! If I have to scrap large parts of it because they just don't make sense to anyone not me, I think I may cry. Or vomit. We shall see.

On the other hand, maybe my testers will think my pattern is genius! They'll tell me its clarity is refreshing, its layout is stunning, its charts are works of graphical spreadsheet wizardry.

One can only hope.