Marathon Swatching

I have mixed feelings about this point in the process. This is when I try to condense all of the design epiphanies I’ve had over the past few weeks into a few swatches – swatches that need to illustrate stitch patterns, color, gauge, general garment construction details (buttonholes, collars, pockets) and must do it in 6 x 8″ I become over whelmed with ideas – I start to swatch one thing, and find the pattern doesn’t work well with the yarn, but leads me to think of something else in the same yarn. So I chart out a new pattern, and start working on the new idea side by side with the old one.

I’m a very organized person, but a level of haphazardness is necessary for this part of the process – which is what makes me NUTS! I don’t have a working studio, per se, so my living room is overflowing with half finished swatches, sketches, plastic containers of carefully labled yarn and needles abound! I do my best knitting work in the evenings, but the light is better in the mornings. Do I sound particularly whiney today?

It’s not that I don’t do swatches at other times – I do – but most of the new yarns from the yarn companies come around the same time, and generally just a few weeks before the next round of designs are due. I can take some of the yarn and ‘plug it in’ to an existing sketch if the marriage between fiber and design is a happy one, but often the new yarns are very inspiring and demand their OWN new design – and one can only knit, sketech and put together design packages SO fast. This aspect of freelancing sucks, there’s no way around it. There has to be a better way to communicate ideas.

Oh, well, in the art community they still require SLIDES for most juried exhibits – what a rip THAT is in this day and age! Ah, everyday I sound more and more like the curmudgeon – if only I could be so clever!

Back to my knitting.