Adventure

I’ve embarked on a new adventure. I’ve enrolled in Shirley Paden’s Handknit Garment Design class on Craftsy. Like all adventures, it’s the journey as much as the arrival your intended destination that changes you. I’m not very far along. I know what I want to design. I know the purpose and shape of the garment and the yarn I want to use. My initial concept was a summer top with gansey stitching, bust darts, and short sleeves. 

My concept collided with reality over the past two nights. 

The yarn is Berrocco Remix: a 100% recycled non-wool tweed worsted weight yarn made from five different fibers. I’ve knit a swatch for another project with three different needle sizes, washed the swatch and know that the yarn grows when hand washed and lay to air dry. 

It slowly dawned on me that most gansey garments are made from solid colored yarn and that the garment would either be too busy with an all over pattern or the pattern would be swallowed by the tweediness of the yarn. 

Bust darts would add the complication of continuing a pattern and knitting the darts simultaneously. This is going to be Herculean feat from jump. I decided to apply the KISS principle: 

• Channel Island cast-on, to create a little interest at the bottom. 1x 1 ribbing (haven’t decided how many rows yet). 2 to 5 rows of garter stitch a row of corn stitch and then stockinette stitches. I’ll report on how it all works out as I knit the first swatch with these elements.

In a week of thinking, looking at stitch dictionaries, looking at projects made from the yarn on Ravelry and reading reviews and comments, this is as far as I’ve gotten. Granted, I’m a newbie; this is my first time out of the gate. 

But this week has engendered in me a deeper appreciation of the process every knit or crochet designer goes through. I appreciated designers and the work they put in before. But it’s a very different walk when you’re wearing those shoes.  

So, when I discovered from an old email and a Ravelry post that one designer has had

1. a crochet pattern sold on and published by Love of Crochet without payment or notification from All Craft Media
2. a sewing pattern sold on without notification or attribution by All Craft Media to Igloo Books for inclusion in A Guide to Sewing
3. a knitting pattern sold on without notification or attribution by All Craft Media for inclusion in A Guide to Knitting

that familiar rush of the anger and outrage at the downright disrespect for the creative ideas and work of another person that I felt at this time last year when I first learned that designers had not been paid, and that arose when A Guide to Knitting and A Guide to Sewing were discovered for sale, returned.  

The management who made those decisions, signed those contracts to sell on, and collected the money is and will remain justifiably infamous.