and sometimes that knitter is me. I always feel awful when we have to reply to a knitter and tell them that the problem they’re having seems to be because they made a mistake. The question of how I ended up designing patterns often comes up in interviews and I always seem to come back to the fact that I was so terribly, terribly bad at following patterns. I know so precisely that moment when things don’t work out and the sinking recognition that it’s almost certainly because of a silly mistake rows back. The obvious response of someone who was so bad at knitting from a pattern is probably to consider a different hobby, one that doesn’t involve following directions, but my response was to decide it might be easier to make the patterns as well. It’s never been said that I make things easy for myself.

Creating patterns, however, turned out to be rather a lot of work (that should probably have been obvious too). Sometimes, I’d rather just knit. My pattern creating skills have improved over the years, and I try and write them so that even I might have a hope of following them, but it appears I’m no better at following patterns. When I got to the front waist shaping on the sweater I’m working (the Mystic pullover from New England Knits) I carefully counted the rows worked on the back so that they’d match perfectly. Except that the same number of rows took me to a completely different place in the cable pattern. Turns out I knit the entire back misreading the chart, working 4 cable crosses in each direction instead of 5. I’d even noticed the extra purl stitch I had one end and just decreased it out without thinking any further. Oh well, it’s not like anyone will be able to compare the back and the front side by side once it’s done. A finished sweater sounds far more appealing than a perfect one!

Stupidity aside, I am loving this project. The pattern is simple but not tediously dull and the yarn is so very snuggly. It’s also notably worked in pieces, unlike most of my own designs, but I didn’t have any desire to change that. I actually quite like finishing, and for this design with it’s inset pockets it makes total sense. It’s also easier to keep track of a cable pattern, I find, when there are right and wrong side rows. Designing sweaters with seamless constructions is certainly something I find interesting, but I do think it’s most important to use a construction that works for the design, one of the patterns in Little Red is worked in pieces.

Even following patterns that I wrote in the first place is problematic, I cast on last night for a hat in colours I’d suddenly decided were woefully absent from my large collection. If I could count, I’d probably be wearing it today instead of ripping it out. Almost at the end of the decreases I realised I’d misplaced the markers, and as the decreases form a rather obvious pattern on the crown it would be clearly out of balance.

When I’m not knitting a sample my general rule is that I’ll rip if not doing so will be blatantly obvious, but otherwise, fudging doesn’t bother me at all. Definitely not a knitter who will “just know a mistake is there and not be able to see anything else”. How about you? Or maybe you’re someone who never has problems following directions, in which case I might hate you a little bit.

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My snowboard classes are in the afternoons so I’ve been working a little on my patterns in the morning. I don’t actually have any recent fos with me so I can’t really do much work on upcoming designs. Consequently this morning I started something I’ve been meaning to do for a while – updating Gretel. Don’t worry, this isn’t to fix errors I just think that the pattern could be a bit clearer.

So far I’m:

- Re-formatting the round by round instructions so that they’re presented in a table with alternate rows shaded, numbered rounds and stitch counts. This format will be familiar to anyone who has the Elijah or Estella patterns but let me know if you don’t understand what I mean and I’ll add a screengrab. I think this format makes things easier to keep track of, but if you hate it let me know why.

- Trying to give more sizing info. I’m going to add the finished crown diameters which might make picking a style easier. Would the length of the decrease section also help? It might make it easier to decide when to begin it as you go. I’ve been thinking about additional sizes but the reason there aren’t any at the moment is because the pattern repeat is a bit wide to make a reasonable jump between sizes without messing up the cables. However although this pattern is stretchy I certainly don’t think that one size fits all and I’d be prepared to work out additional sizes if there is a demand. If you had sizing issues with the pattern (other than wanting to make it for a child with a small head*) were / could these be solved either by making the cast on looser or by making a different one of the pattern’s offered styles?

- eta – charts yes! I honestly have no idea why I didn’t include them in the first place since I certainly prefer working from them myself.

If you’ve made or are working on Gretel I’d really appreciate any other feedback you have on the pattern so that I can make it clearer. Thank you and happy new year!

*for that matter do let me know if you are interested in making this for a child, I could add that if there’s sufficient demand too.

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The pattern for Estella is now available to purchase in the shop.

I’ve tried a few new things with the layout of this pattern that will hopefully make it easier to read and keep track of where you are so I’d love to know what you think of it.

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Yesterday, seeing as it’s now September and no longer officially ‘summer’, was warm and summery and not at all like the dismalness that has prevailed since June. My friend Jamie has a new camera to play with and consequently volunteered to be take some photos of my new beret (er that would be one of my new berets). We had a lot of fun wandering around pretending to be tourists and investigated the interior of St Giles cathedral, which is very pretty and almost certainly on every list of must see sights in Edinburgh. We’re both from here but neither of us had ever been inside. We also went to the museum of childhood, an old favourite but way less creepy since they’ve turned the lights up in the doll room. It was warm enough that buying ice cream didn’t seem ridiculous and it certainly added something to our tourist pretence, but we did at least resist the urge to ask the real tourists stupid questions (eg. where’s the castle?).

My local tip is that this lovely herb garden is off the royal mile, near the bottom just past the graveyard. It doesn’t seem very well known, and doesn’t look like much from the street so it’s always quiet and peaceful. At least a little like a secret garden.

Being a tourist, even a pretend one, is hard work, especially in a city that it is impossible to go anywhere as the crow flies and in which the ground is never flat, so we spent the evening vegetating and watching Tank Girl. We may be two of the only people who love that film, although that’s not the only reason we’re friends. We also discovered, while trying to find out what else Tank Girl has been in on IMDB (umm… nothing very notable) that Jet Girl = Naomi Watts. Well that would be why she looks so familiar, huh?

Anyway, Estella, aka star stitch beret. These photos, with their pretty back drops, are maybe not the best for actually seeing the detail – don’t worry though I’ll take some boring but clearer ones for the pattern. Unless you like mystery knits? It’s basically a nice slouchy beret, although it would be very simple to make less slouchy, in a two colour star stitch pattern.

I love this yarn, baby lama from Mirasol. So very soft and not at all itchy in the way that alpaca so often is. The colours are beautiful, I spent a good twenty minutes sitting on the shop floor trying to choose, these photos really don’t show the depth of the colours. Some of the proceeds from the yarn range also goes to funding a school in Peru, although I couldn’t find much in the way of exact details about what percentage etc. My cynicism aside the yarn is gorgeous and the project certainly seems to be worth supporting. They have a bunch of different partners to distribute the yarn in different countries so I think that it’s fairly widely available. According to the shop display it’s exclusive to John Lewis here. There were 3 other yarns in the range, although they didn’t have the wool / cotton blend while I was there or I might have bought some of that too, there were also some pattern booklets but I’m not sure what they’re like. I think they’re all designed by Jane Ellison, who also seems to have been involved in designing the branding and yarn.
Pattern soon – and I really mean that this time. It shouldn’t take too long because I really am getting better at writing patterns as I go. Next mission – writing a pattern before knitting it. I’m convinced this is a skill that I’m going to need to develop in my efforts to be a professional designer. Did I just type those two words in reference to myself? Eep.

The dress is from Jigsaw, about a year ago. I’ve reached the conclusion that my special occasion clothes will never be worn if I wait for suitable occasions to turn up. That it makes me happy seems like a good enough reason to wear them just because, and photo shoots are always a good excuse.

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