What Designers can learn from Working in a Yarn Store., Dark Matter Knits‘s post made me think through the designs I’ve made in the past, and the ones I’m trying to write up. I realised that Herringbone Parallelogram Scarf hit most of her points, so I put the mittens on hold, and wrote it up.
Here is how it hits (or misses) her points:
The scarf is not too hard.
You can substitute yarns for it,
It would make a good class project (for an intermediate class). In fact, if you want to teach a class with my pattern, e mail me at Christine at ChristineGuestDesigns dot com and I will send you a code for each of your students to use when they download my pattern. It will save them each a quarter. I will throw in your copy for free.
And it looks , “Shiny,” at least on my brother-in-law as photographed by his wife (no, he does not come with pattern purchase…I’ve been asked!)
Do I have a niche? I’ve got one pattern for sale – working on that one.
Did I keep a sample? Yes, it’s on it’s way home from California – any store want to display it? You can have it until it gets cold and my husband wants a warm neck.
Speaking of stores, my pdf can be downloaded in the new Ravelry pattern wholesale program.
Is it over-designed? Not as much as my projects usually get, simplicity is as hard as humour (you know, as in, dying is easy, humour is hard?)
Attractive binder for a store? Nope. I’m too lazy to get into publishing on paper right now, and where would I keep it all? I live in an apartment.
I’ll add a point of my own: a man would wear this scarf, especially with finer yarns.
Hi! How cool to see you thinking through my blog post with respect to your own design. (Which I love, by the way — I had admired it already on the Ravelry Designer forum.) I’m going to subscribe to your blog because I’ll be really curious to see how your design work develops!
blush. Cool to hear from you Elizabeth. I’m planning on getting a web site up next, not doing as much design work until December, because it’s a busy time in our homeschool (and summer stuff is weird knitting…got to work on my attitude, cotton and linen are cool too…) but hopefully you won’t be bored.
LOL! I think you have a great male model and photographer going for you. Especially if they don’t charge too much. :o)
Is that a knitting or crochet pattern? I’ve told Marina to write down her patterns, but she tends to make it up as she goes along, so she doesn’t like stopping to write things down. She’s a free spirit.
Peace and Laughter!
Whoops. I always forget that WordPress turns my clown smileys into surprised faces. That should be a smiley! :-)
It is a knit pattern. My sister-in-law would not let me pay her! But I snuck in some Starbucks money with the return postage check.
Does Marina have an audio device she could record into? A pretty notebook is also motivating.
I usually get lazy and “read” my knitting later to figure out what I did, but with tricky things like apliqued leaves, or stuff, I have to un-ravel it stitch by stitch to figure out what I did if I don’t write it down – not fun.
Writing patterns is it’s own craft, one I’ve been banging my head against these last two years and do not have mastered yet. But there are tech editors to make sure you said what you meant to say in recognisible terms. Amazing people.