Metamorphosis

I've always loved designing as much as I do knitting. This means I hardly ever follow a pattern, not even one of my own creation, as I keep making modifications as new ideas come along.

Knitting, like any other visual art, involves both aesthetics and technique. Accordingly, there are two aspects of designing patterns that I love: one is the pleasure of creative thinking, playing with colour, texture and shape, and the other the problem solving aspect of it. When I see a knitted garment, my first thought is often "How is that done?" and solving that puzzle all by myself is one of the reason I usual don't ever buy patterns. The other being that during or after the often lengthy process of solving the puzzle, a bunch of modifications and improvements have already occurred to me. So, why buy a pattern when I have a much better idea, right?

One limitation I have been feeling very keenly lately, when it comes to designing, is the available yarn in my stash. I have a relatively large one. Not for most knitter's standards, but for mine. I have been trying to destash for years and thus I avoid buying new yarn as much as possible. Lately, I've actually succeeded in reaching a phase where my stash is decreasing, albeit slowly, because I sometimes need to buy more yarn in order to finish a project that is already half way through. The main problem with my stash is that I usually buy yarn on impulse, too often because it's on sale, without having a specific purpose in mind. The result is that I end up with a lot of yarn which doesn't fit any of the projects I want to knit. As I become a more experienced knitter, I've started noticing one problem of buying yarn on impulse: I tend to buy skeins that look good on their own; nice bright, often variegated, colours. But I don't fancy wearing nice bright colours. Instead, when it comes to finished garments, I prefer soothing, earthy tones. In my designs, I'm often inspired by nature, and, accordingly, gravitate to ocean blues, tree greens, earthy browns, sunny yellows, cloudy greys and skin-toned beiges.

Lately, I'm going through a big change as a knitter. On the one hand, my tastes are becoming more educated. In terms of yarn, I'm still destashing, but I know that if I ever buy again, I will make more judicious decisions, both in terms of colour and quality. Forget sales, if I'm going to spend days working on something and, hopefully, years wearing it, I want to use the right yarn. As I start to feel more confident with my knitting, I'm starting to think, why not knit that amazing pattern created by some famous designer? This doesn't mean that I'm going to stop designing my own, just that always doing it is unnecessary limitative.

In conclusion, I've bought my first pattern. It's Ranunculus by Midori Hirose. Before I bought it, I thought long and hard on what yarn in my stash could go with it, because I'm still keeping my decision of never starting a new project unless I have the yarn for it. I've already made a small swatch and I'm very happy with my choice of yarn. I think I found a really good match for this lovely project.