I’ve been knitting samples for my favourite yarn shop. I feel all grown up in a knitterly way – I’m a professional knitter now. Well, sort of. I’ve made a scarf and am about to complete a beret. I don’t think I’ll be giving up my day job for quite a long time.
The knitted samples are a way for the yarn shop to show off their yarns as well as the patterns they have for sale. They sell all of the usual pattern books for an Australian knitting shop – which means Patons, Cleckheaton, Naturally and Jo Sharp. They also have a nice range of Louisa Harding books and reference books on lace, cables etc.
My yarn shop also sells it’s own patterns and this is what I’ve been knitting this week. The patterns are different to knitting something from say, Patons. By the time I knit a Patons pattern it’s been through a lot of proof reading, style checks, editing and testing. Knitting patterns from the local yarn shop have a slightly home-made feel.
When I say “home-made” I don’t mean this to be negative. A pattern doesn’t need to be polished to be accurate and good. But there are things in the patterns for the scarf and the beret that I’d do differently.
The first thing I’d do differently is be precise about what sort of increase or decrease will be best. An experienced knitter can say “bugger the k2tog, I’m doing a ssk“. They can do this and know the outcome. An inexperienced knitter might only know how to do one type of increase and end up doing that increase to the determent of the knitting.
I remember making my first jumper and the sleeve shaping instruction was “decrease one stitch at each end of every right side row”. Not knowing any better, I went ahead with a k2tog on the first and last two stitches of each row. I ended up with a horribly loose sleeve with stitches on the edges that I couldn’t sew up. I didn’t even know about making decreases a stitch or two in from the edge to preserve stability.
The patterns I’ve been knitting remind me a bit of this. They assume a certain level of knowledge and I don’t think this is always a good idea. It will certainly shape how write down patterns in the future.
Speaking of which, I have a few more patterns for this blog that I’ll add soon. Also, I will be taking a few to the yarn shop to see if they are interested in putting my patterns (with defined increases) on their books.
But back to the sample beret now. I want to finish it tonight so I can get on to even more knitting.
