Inspiration, design process & frustration

WARNING - this is a long self indulgent blog post with me being a bit arty :-)

 Over the years I've meet quite a few people who want to be crochet/knitting designers, they normally have lots of questions, but the main ones are where I get my inspiration from and my design process.

Its very difficult to answer either of these questions, but I'll give it a go.

I've read an awful lot of blog's and bio's stating that the maker's inspiration comes from nature or their local landscape.
This statement doesn't work for me as its too vague,my local landscape is stunning and ever changing in different lights and different times of year and to pick out one colour or one inspiration would be impossible.
Plus my local landscape contains everything from a dead sheep carcass rotting on the moor to a rare orchid in a field of butterflies
Most of my inspirations are very personal, but also reflect the place I live, and some blankets come from several different inspirations merged together.
For example the book blanket I have just finished was originally inspired by a early morning walk through a meadow on the banks of the West Lyn, the air was clear and clean and yet full of the smell of wild garlic with clouds of butterflies and flowers in the hazy sunshine.
But the blanket is also inspired by memories of my mother and aunt's fabric stashes and the fact they were both seamstresses for the whole of their lives. My mother died several years ago, but aunty Pat is still sewing :-)

So that's the inspiration question answered, now onto the design process...

I normally start off with a vague inspiration and shape in mind and then spend hours on Photoshop colouring in graph paper and developing and refining.
Once I have something I'm happy with I print it and start sketching (swatching) with my crochet hook.
Yarn is no problem as I'm very lucky to have my own giant personal  stash, commonly known as The Natural Dye Studio's stock.
If I haven't got the colour or yarn I want I dye it especially for my blanket.
Once the design, motif and colours are right all I have to do is make the blanket, I normally refine design elements or colour as I go.

However occasionally my whole design process breaks down and I just can't do "it".
I spent the end of last week and this weekend not being able to do "it".
I'd had the inspiration, worked on the chart, but once it came to the actual colours and crochet my designing capabilities disappeared.
I spent most of the weekend moaning to Instagram and Facebook about how frustrated I was, posting photo's of my failures and then yesterday lunchtime, just before I put my hook down for the afternoon I had a light bulb moment.
I have to thank Charlotte on Facebook for an honest comment, I'm not sure if she meant it in the way I read it, but it made me stop and think about what I was doing wrong.

So here are some of the photo's in order of posting.

Book Blanket NO 6 has 4 different motif's, one of them is a flower motif, the others are flat.
I decided that a 3D flower wasn't going to work as it would pull the finished blanket out of shape, so all these went to the discard pile.

Then I designed a flat flower motif, which a lot of people loved, but it wasn't very new and exciting and its really not what I do. Charlotte said "very retro" which I read as "you are going backwards"

I thought maybe it was wrong because I was using the wrong colour's, so the frogging began and re-started every time I tried a new colour combination.

My light bulb moment was realising the colours were fine, it was the motif that was wrong and these day's I prefer solid motifs as they are more like colouring than crochet and I love colouring!

So the flowers disappeared and were replaced with circles

I did have a long confused debate with Phil trying to get him to understand that hedges don't need to be green, which resulted in him trying to prove his point by showing me photo's he'd search on his phone of green hedges.

So here it is the very beginnings of Book Blanket NO 6, after a very long frustrating design process (without green hedges)

(Don't worry the relevance of green hedges will be revealed in time :-)

Blanket Book Update September 2014

I've been busily working on my new blanket book blankets behind the scenes and I thought it would be nice to do a progress update on the blog.
So far I've finished 5, I only need to do another 2 this year to be on track for the deadline.
But I haven't really started writing the patterns yet, I'm hoping to get them done over the autumn.

So here are the blankets carefully photographed so you aren't able to see them fully.
The book has a theme that covers all the blankets in the book,
There are 7 sections in the book, 2 blankets per section, each blanket has its own inspiration, but each section has a inspiration and basic design which covers both blankets....hope this makes sense...

I think there are clues to the overall theme in these photo's, I wonder if you can work it out.......


Blanket 1

King Sized, made in Godiva HT 4 Ply

Blanket 2

Sister to blanket 1

Lap Blanket made with Primavera DK

Blanket 3

Lap Blanket made with Godiva Silk 4 Ply

Blanket 4

Sister to blanket 3

Single Bed Blanket made with Primavera DK

Blanket 5

Lap blanket, made in Phoenix/Dazzling 4 Ply

Phoenix 4 Ply = Dazzling 4 ply (Almost!!)

Back in September 2010 our main supplier had a disaster.
His warehouse burnt down, along with all our stock of yarn, luckily he had a container of new yarn types on the way from Peru.
You can read about it HERE

We had 2 new wool/silk 4 ply's to choose from and so we choose the BFL (Dazzling - 55% BFL/45% Silk), rather than the Merino version (Phoenix - 50% Merino/50% Silk).
Life was very chaotic at the time and we were in panic mode and the 2 yarns were so similar it didn't seem to matter which one we choose.
Fast forward to July 2014.
Our main supplier had run out of Dazzling 4 ply and was waiting for the next shipment.
But at the moment I am making blanket number 5 for my new book in Dazzling 4 ply and I was desperate for a couple of colours, so I ordered the Merino version to fill the gap.
After I had dyed my new colours I was totally amazed at the difference the yarn took the dye.
We had never dyed the Phoenix here on Exmoor and so didn't realise how well it dyed, the colours are still soft and subtle, but deeper and richer than the Dazzling.
Plus the extra 5% silk seems to make the yarn much softer.

So for purely selfish reasons I have decided to discontinue the Dazzling 4 ply and replace it with the Phoenix 4 ply.
Its almost impossible to tell the 2 yarns apart, so you can use them together and use Phoenix for Dazzling patterns.
We were going to have a update with both the yarns this week, however sadly for you most of the Phoenix sold before I had time to write the mailing list mail, so there are only a few skeins left.

But don't worry we do have another 4 kilos on the way, so we will be dyeing it over the next few weeks.
In the meantime I have added all the Dazzling to the sale, so you can grab a bargain while you wait :-)
The sale is HERE

Kaleidoscope and Zodiac mystery blanket clubs

Our 2014 Kaleidoscope crochet blanket club has reached August.

The blanket has grown fast and the design is beginning to show through, its now almost too big to photograph it, but Valerie and Denise have managed it :-)

I think the members are enjoying the club and I love to see the monthly photo's appearing on Ravelry.
All the blankets look different as there was a difference in dye lots for each colour we sent the members.
I know there are some blankets which have a dark Blackmoor Gate (purple), it will be really interesting to see what the difference is to the final look of the blankets.
I can't wait until December when I can reveal the photo's of my blanket and see the member's blankets.
I've never run a mystery blanket club before, we've had lots of teething problems, but I think the results are worth all the confusion.

And we have sorted out all the blanket club teething problems in time for next year's Zodiac club blankets.
You notice I have missed out the word crochet, that's because my very talented design team have been working towards producing a knitted blanket.
Valerie has been amazing, she's worked hard to design the knitted motifs, not only is she a talented designer in her own right, but she is also my right hand man and I couldn't do half of what I do without her.
I'm always in awe of her dedication and the way she steps in to sort out my issues.
Anyway back to Zodiac rather than continuing my love letter to Valerie :-)

The knitted blanket motifs are at a stage of design development where I feel confident to put the knitted club sign-ups on-line.
You can find them HERE

At the moment I am working on producing a workable pattern so the Nicky can start knitting the knitted sample.
You would not believe how long this blanket has taken to design, I started to work on it in March.
At the time it was going to be a simple starry blanket, but I kept developing the design, making it more and more complicated, until it ended up being the whole Zodiac arranged around the sun.
It went through hundreds of edits until I got all the constellations fitting together in the right order.
And that was the easy bit!

I couldn't get the colours right and I've dyed kilo's and kilo's of Primavera 260 sport trying to get colours that worked.
Plus I needed to use full skeins rather than the mini skeins we spent months re-winding for Kaleidoscope.
The maths involved was horrific, weighing motifs and working out how many could be made per skein and then trying to colour in the chart with the right number of motifs per colour.
Luckily I have a trusty Valerie who recalculated all my numbers and pointed out that I had miscounted the number of octagons needed, which threw all my maths into disarray!

Now I am working on the monthly patterns, which entails cutting the pattern into monthly sections and redrawing each month's chart in a way I can understand which star belongs to which constellation.
And then I have to translate all 12 months in to "crochet/knit by numbers" charts, which should make the design easy for you to follow.....phew....

The knitted swatch hasn't been made yet as I am still working on the crochet/knit by numbers charts for Nicky to follow.
Yesterday I tried to explain to her what I was doing, I think she understood, but her eyes glazed over several times.....

Here a very sneaky peek of the sun of the crochet version.
The knitted version will look totally different as the knitted motifs are solid, but its the same colours in the same layout and the charts I am working on at the moment will be used for both clubs.
I should add if you want to sign up for the crochet version you can find all the options HERE