A Passing Fancy
For the past few years, I’ve had the occasional thought that I’d like to try writing a knitting pattern. I am a person of many anxieties though, so I’ve never actually tried to do it.
One of my many, many problems is that I tend to get ahead of myself. Rather than dealing with step 1 of trying to design something (you know, actually coming up with a design), I start worrying about step 978 and then don’t even attempt step 1. A quick look at how my brain works…
Normal Brain: Ok, so I think I want to design a scarf that kind of looks like a beanstalk from Jack and the Beanstalk.
Anxiety Brain: That could be cool. What if you did a whole series of designs based on fairy tales?
Normal Brain: Uh, well, I don’t know if I’m ready to commit to that sort of thing - though it sounds fun I guess.
Anxiety Brain: And then you could try to get it published as a pattern book! And write new versions of classic fairy tales to go along with it!
Normal Brain: I don’t know…
Anxiety Brain: Then you can branch out into designs based on DnD type characters and the patterns could be on character sheets and you could sell them at conventions and things like that.
Normal Brain: Really, I just want to try designing one thing and see if I like it…
Anxiety Brain: Oh, but what if Wizards of the Coast sues you. Definitely don’t use the DnD brand…or anything too similar to their character sheets. Also, you aren’t that good of a writer so maybe coming up with new versions of fairy tales is a bad idea. How are you going to come up with a design anyway? Can you use stitches from stitch dictionaries or is that cheating? What if you accidentally design something that is like something else someone has made? Or something offensive? What if you write a pattern and no one understands it or thinks the design is stupid? Or simple enough that you shouldn’t have needed to write a pattern at all?!
Normal Brain: You know what? Forget it.
So. Yeah. That’s what it’s like to live in my brain.
I did a quick search online yesterday to see if anyone had written about the process of designing knitwear and the first thing that came up was a book called The Beginner’s Guide to Writing Knitting Patterns by Kate Atherley. While thinking about buying it, I realized the cover looked familiar. So I went to my knitting shelf and lo and behold:
I already own the book. Like I said, it’s something I’ve thought about from time to time.
Instead of overwhelming myself, I’m going to start with step 0. Read this book. If I still have questions from there, well, I’ll make a list and tackle them one at a time.
Here is a shot of my “Knitting Shelf” - I figured I should at least have some sort of yarn content in this post!
