Patterns and Precision - Little Yellow Cat

So much for my New Year’s Resolution to blog every week. It’s February already and I’ve only made one entry! There is still time to redeem myself and I’m still going to aim for at least one entry each week this year.

Over the past few weeks I’ve begun to change how I knit. Nothing dramatic like changing from English to Continental (I’m Australian, and most of us knit English style). The change I’ve noticed is that I’ve become a lot more focused on detail and precision for my patterns.

Ok, so far the patterns I’ve put up here and on Rav have been pretty basic. Scarves with two to four row repeats and a hat based on one of the scarf stitch patterns. The Camomile Lawn Tea Cosy is probably my most “complex” pattern so far and I honestly just knit it up and scribbled down the instructions as I went. No swatching and only one repeat knit to check my pattern. It’s a nice tea cosy but kind of lazy pattern writing.

Now I’m working on a fine reversible lace beret. I made the first one for my friend and colleague Tegan in November last year. Again, no swatching – just writing it down as I went. This year I decided to put the pattern on Ravelry as a free download – but this would mean (shock, horror!) typesetting and turning it into a nice looking pdf file. So I started by turning my scribbled notes into a fresh set of scribbled notes – it didn’t make them any more readable but it did give me a chance to see if my original notes made sense.

The next steps were to knit the beret again, type up the pattern and arrange it on the page so it looks half decent and readable and then to re-write the pattern for a smaller size. Not everyone has a watermelon head like I do so I need to keep those with dainty noggins in mind.

So this is where I’m up to right now – making up the smaller size. I’ve lined up a model – the gorgeous Renata who is also a colleague and for her modelling time and cuteness she gets a beret in her choice of colour. She has chosen the colour Bluestone. The yarn is Morris Empire and here is a link to the Morris and Sons website which shows all the colours available.

http://www.morrisandsons.com.au/catalog/multi_info.php?cPath=1_341_1549&multiID=1549

As I’m sure you can appreciate, it took Renata quite a while to choose just one colour.

I’m sure that everyone else who has ever written a beret pattern has done all of this checking and testing and probably much more, but for me this is a new thing. All this testing means I’ll have knitted the beret five times – which is not something I’d normally do without a lot of swearing and complaint. But I’m quite happy about it all and that’s just really weird. To see how things would look with four extra rows of the rib section I just knit a whole other beret. All this time invested into what will very soon be another free beret pattern amongst the hundreds of others on Ravelry.

I think a lot of the change in my approach to refining patterns has been the result of knitting samples for my LYS. Some of the patterns have been great and some have been less than great. Poor planning for decreases that result in bulky seams and oddly placed shaping. Because I’m knitting to order, I have to follow the patterns to the letter which means I can’t move that k2tog two stitches in from the edge – even though it means seaming will be hell.

I just don’t want my patterns to be those that make people think “Ewww – I don’t think she put much thought into this pattern’.

So I’m very happy with how this beret – the Tegan Beret – is going. It’s a simple lace pattern that looks like cables but only uses simple increases and decreases. Also, the wrong side is really cute too. I love patterns that are reversible and this one has two really different but really cute options so that’s just a bonus.

I’m knitting the final one for the photos at the moment and I hope to get a chance to photograph Renata wearing it late this week. As soon as I have a picture it will go straight onto Ravelry as a free download – the typesetting is already done.

As I have some spare Empire yarn in my stash, I might even have a blog prize draw of a pattern and yarn for the hat – but I’ll just have to check dye lots first. I’d hate to offer a prize draw that has two skeins of yarn that don’t match.

I’ll update on this later this week when the pattern is “launched”. Until next time then.

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