It’s crazy to think a year has gone by since I got married. A year ago on this nearly 90 degree day, I was running around like crazy taking care of all the last minute details of our do-it-yourself wedding, right down to the flowers with live succulents, the booze, the invites, the music, the wedding fans: you name it, we probably made it ourselves. Between my husband and I, we have enough of a skill set to host any kind of party. Oh, and the crochet. There was crochet! “Crocheted Gifts” by Kim P Werker had just come out and I saw Annie Modesitt’s, “Trinity Lace Shrug” and loved it. It was a week before the wedding and I had no time to think of engineering a garment on my own considering all that I was already doing. I bought the book and set out to make the garment within days of the wedding (cutting it close, eh?)

What you can't see are my buckling knees, no lie! 6" yellow heels will do that to a gal.

Our wedding was the anti-wedding and I was the anti-bride. Neither of us are completely into formalities. We didn’t want anything fussy since we’re not fussy people. We like to have fun and hang with our friends and that’s what our wedding was set out to be: a party to celebrate 10 years together. That doesn’t mean we boozed it up making our way down the aisle! We did have our fair share of laughs though. The ceremony was both very touching and quite humorous at the same time. Our wedding “celebrant,” Dana did a fantastic job delivering the opening remarks. There was a lot of poking and at times it felt like a roast (in a good way).

No booze was ingested during the making of this photograph. I swear.

We had a simple ceremony that lasted 15 minutes. I wrote the reading which left very few dry eyes in the small group of 50 family and friends; I am a soothsayer with the words when I need to be. We also wrote our own vows. I don’t know how I got through that ceremony without crying.

Someone yelled, "IT'S ABOUT FREAKIN' TIME!" right after we were pronounced husband and wife. Love, Love, Love!

But I did. It was an emotional day made extra emotional by the recent passing of my step-father just a few months earlier. His passing was the impetus to move forward and get married after a 5 year engagement (no, your eyes aren’t deceiving you on that number). We received so many compliments on the wedding. Many said it was hands down the best wedding they had ever been to.

Our reception was a party. No fussy sit-down meal. Incredible food served buffet style. All organics! Friends made up the band and switched out during different sets so the music was always pumping. We skipped the wedding cake – we both HATE cake, yuck – and opted for Bailey’s vanilla ice cream in a chocolate bowl with a chocolate dipped spoon. SUPER YUM.

A sweet ending to a sweet day.

It’s a good day when a box of yarn arrives, especially when it’s packed with 6 skeins of Tilli Tomas yarn. I bought:

3 skeins of Voile de la Mer in Moroccan Blue

3 Skeins of Plie Silk in Gloxinia, Atmosphere, and Midnight Borealis

At the moment, the Voile will be used to finish the re-do of the top I was working on last week when I ran out. And the Plie will be used probably to make 3 different, small scarves (At least at the moment that’s what the plan is. Things change quickly around here). I probably won’t get to those scarves until September though because I have a lot of work to do before then. Oh, and that doesn’t include a super secret project for an upcoming book submission. Mums the word on that one.

Also bright and shiny new is my yarn swift my awesome husband gave me for my birthday yesterday! I’m stoked because I’ve never had one before and surely I need it with all these hanks lying around. I’m hoping to get a ball winder soon. I have one on my wish list (birthday season isn’t over yet I’m told).

I can’t wait to test drive it!

Wouldn’t you like to know what this is???

Actually, it’s a shawl.

And I’m only showing this lil’ bit. It’s a work-in-progress right now. It’s taking awhile to design because it’s fairly complicated. It’s a challenge. A fun challenge.

Speaking of complicated, I had asked both my Facebook group and the folks at CLF on Ravelry what their thoughts were about trying out patterns labeled “advanced intermediate” and “experienced,” and I was pleasantly surprised that many were in favor of harder patterns. Based on my own sales of slightly harder patterns, I’ve found the more simple ones sell. Well, that was my opinion a few years back anyways. Certainly that will be tested out when I publish this pattern; we’ll see if I’m wrong (and I won’t complain about being wrong on this one).

Love the execution.

Hate the style.

FUG-et-about-it

In a nutshell, that’s how I feel about this tunisian shawl. I just spent a half hour the other day going through all my crochet stuff trying to organize the items into three piles: sell, donate, and needs pictures for pattern updates (that’s what I’ve been doing ad naseum for over a week now). This one didn’t exactly fall into any of those categories.

I don’t think I could sell it. It’s made with yarn that I ashamedly purchased at the beginning of my crochet career when frizzy, fuzzy, play yarns were all the rage. Don’t get me wrong, I’m also grateful for them. That’s right: GRATEFUL. Whether we like them or not, novelty yarns brought more people to the crochet and knit community. They got people to demand more yarns in big box craft stores like ACMoore and Michaels. They got people talking – not always in a good way either! Don’t be hatin’ on the fun fur (too much).

So a few years down the road from having made the Miami Scallop Shawl – and having fed into the novelty yarn rage by actually designing with it – I’m sitting here looking at this design pondering it’s revival.  I believe in the design. I really do. When looked at on it’s own, it’s really nice. And the garment does have great drape. But the yarn. Ohhhhh, that yarnnnnn! It’s hard to get past. Whatever yarn I replace it with has to have the same great drape as this does.

Anyone have an great yarn recommendations for a very drapey yarn, most likely with some silk or other organic content to help this design along? I might be pondering a variegated yarn. Thoughts?

I feel better now having aired that dirty laundry!

I’m stoked that the Midsummer’s Dream Camisole (published in the Summer 2008 edition of Interweave Crochet) copyright came back to me awhile ago. This was a popular pattern in terms of “love” on Ravelry (453 hearts isn’t so bad, is it?). I edited the pattern and bought yarn back in March, but I’ve slacked on it ever since. Apparently I’m in the mood to get the WIPS out of the  way because I picked it up again a day and a half ago.

I’d completed the waistband portion and a little of the skirt but ran into an error in my stitching and put it down back in March. I’m back on track now and pumping away at this (actually, I was up until 3am last night working on it).

Since I’m not making it a surprise as to what the design is – it’s already been published – I’ll say that I’ve re-worked this piece using a different yarn (truth be told, I hated the original yarn I designed it in as it was chosen for me and it was constantly a tangly mess; I’d never buy it on my own). I’ve chosen to use Voile de la Mer by Tilli Tomas in Moroccan Blue and Sky Drop. Love those names. They sound so delish.

I had to use the beat-up looking mannequin for this shot, eh?

OK, so I’ve always prided myself in working with affordable yarns, yada yada. This is one project that I wanted to splurge on though. And customers can sub out the yarn – as most do anyways – for whatever they like. I have to say, crocheters are a crafty, construct-their-own-reality kind of people; they never seem to use the suggested yarn. Am I doing a good job of justifying the $18 a skein price on this one, already 4 skeins into it and probably another 2 to go?

Unfortunately, it looks like I have to buy another 2 skeins of yarn to complete this.

“Buy?” you say. “Don’t all designers get free yarn?”

Yes, buy. I’m a self-published designer and I don’t have the yarn connections to get my own yarn. I buy my own. And boy is it painful at $18 a skein! Oh well.

Look for this design soonish (depends on when the yarnie reinforcements arrive).

Green.

Something about the color green triggers certain memories for me. Actually, colors in general do that for me. It’s how my brain is wired: a crazy juxtaposition of spoken words –  both from pop culture and my own experiences – and colors along with a heavy helping of loaded feelings. That’s how I remember things. I rarely can re-tell a story and give the play-by-play of it all, rather choosing to regurgitate it in a non-sequential order in the manner in which it was coded into my brain.

Think of my memory being like a long rope. Tied to the rope are smaller ropes that jut off in different directions, each coded with a piece of memory in no certain order. I can reach down and pick up the rope at any give point, tapping into just a part of something but not really knowing why it’s been placed there and if I’ll ever revisit it again.

Sometimes I can remember where I was standing or what I was wearing or doing when someone or something triggers that memory for me, never really recalling exactly what was said line-by-line, but rather how it made me feel and the general gist of the scenario. I’m not a gal of facts and history. I’d flunk at Jeopardy. Just sayin’.

So there I was two weeks ago trying to put together an idea of a pattern. I pulled out 7 skeins of “Luna” by Elann, a rich green color that I really loved.

Cypress Shimmer. What a great name. I quickly formed the idea to make a bag out of it because I was unsure if I had enough for a garment. It felt like a perfect Fall color. And I had a brown leather handle that would look awesome with the green.

Rewind a few days prior to this, I’d conducted a little online research about crocheters buying trends for crocheted handbag patterns. I’d quickly surmised that people might not be inclined to buy patterns that featured pre-bought handles. So I settled on coming up with something that was yarn-only and cool. But what to do?

Don't I look ridiculous trying to be serious?

I attest the rest of my inspiration for the Rhiannon Tote on subliminal messages because none of the thoughts for why I carried out this project the way I did were from my conscious memory. They were somewhere far down on that rope. In this case, you could say I started this project based on an inward motivation to do something, anything, and that I was moving towards my inspiration (Not the predictable order of things I suppose).

Braids. I had them in my head. Why? I didn’t know (at the time). I thought it would be cool to make a braided handle. It’d be sturdy. I could pad it for comfort. And it would be unique; I’d never seen a braided handle before.

Fast Forward to three days ago, I was struggling for a name for this newly created tote.

Inner dialog: “Green. GREEN!”

And then it was like weird science. I saw green. My brain spit out, “Rhiannon.” And then the lyrics came swirling in my head causing an earworm:

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
And wouldn’t you love to love her?
Takes through the sky like a bird in flight
And who will be her lover?

All your life you’ve never seen a woman
Taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you Heaven?
Will you ever win?

But why? GREEN! The cover of the Fleetwood Mac album is green.

And the braids? Rhiannon was a Welsh goddess. Celtic art is filled with knots and braiding. And why was this all on my mind? My step-father. He loved Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks. He took me to see her once when she was playing solo. It was one of the few concerts I recall going to as a child but I remembered how much he lusted over Stevie. His birthday would have been two weeks ago. He would have been 60.

Love ya Joe. Miss you lots.

Twins! I had twins folks!

Two patterns in one day. What a busy day.

First up is the Rhiannon Tote, which I’m pretty stoked about because the graphics on this pattern are just fabulous (if I do say so myself). There are two stitch diagrams,  slew of step-by-step photos, and one additional illustration to accompany the text. Here are some product shots that my awesome husband took of me carrying the tote downtown. Click on the thumbnails to expand.

As well as the Dandelion Neck Cuff. Which for some crazy reason I can’t seem to put pictures of it in it’s own image gallery in the same blog post with the tote bag. Oh well.

Birthing.

That’s what I call it. I don’t make patterns. I don’t write patterns. I birth them. When I’m done, I’m exhausted, wishing I had opted for that epidural, and happy the screaming is over. It’s the closest thing to real live birth I’ll ever experience. No, really.

Yes, self-publishing patterns – the way I do things anyways – is quite challenging, tedious, and epic (Epic because it doesn’t seem as though I do much of it these days.) My design process is probably different than most because, for the most part, it’s not consistent. The inspiration portion isn’t anyways. But once I get going on something tangible, it is.

I’m usually married to the computer (iPad these days) during the writing portion because I need to design and type at the same time. This saves me frustration later in trying to read my chicken scratch handwriting after I’ve crossed out too much text that it’s unreadable. While I’m writing the pattern, I have to be thinking 12 steps ahead what’s coming next so that if there are any unique step-outs I have to shoot (step-outs being those pictures I use in my patterns to illustrate the text), I can do it as I’m working and not have to go back and try to fudge it later on. It’s a real time saver.

So last night at about 1am – yes, I was up, weren’t you? – Mr. NexStitch took the last batch of step-outs for me (You know, because I can’t take pictures of myself and demonstrate at the same time. There’s no app for that yet but I’m working on it along with a Dinner that Cooks Itself app). I figured some readers (read: designers) might be interested in seeing how I take the step-outs. I know lighting is an issue for some doing the same thing.

This is just a basic set-up:

3 Tungsten lamps

1 Photo tent

1 Bounce

1 Adjustable table

1 Tripod

Really, there’s no big set-up here with a million lights.

I set up a large photo tent (the big white boxy thing that I’m sitting in front of) on a short, adjustable table. I have a small stool I can sit on to lean somewhat comfortably into the tent. There are two tungsten suns, I mean lights (they’re so hot!) set up to the left and right of me outside the tent, and an additional one hanging above the tent, leaning far over the tent. A camera is positioned on a tripod and placed right up against me as to appear as though it’s looking over my shoulder.

Sometimes these step-out shots can take awhile. It’s taken a couple years to get a good rhythm going to pump them out quick enough that they don’t waste anyone’s time in having to wait for the next picture to be taken. Or the bulbs. The bulbs are expensive. $8.00 a pop and they don’t last a long time either so they can’t be wasted.

Or burn. Burning my face on tungsten lights that are placed mere feet from my face is not fun. Not fun at all. In the end, this set-up works for me as I’m able to put out some nice quality pictures that need very little manipulation after the fact (another time-saver).

So, what’s your set-up?

I wrote a pattern this week. Yep, you heard that correctly.

I.

Wrote.

A.

Pattern.

I know, you’re wondering why did it take so long (for the record, me too). Well to be accurate, it took about a week and a half to write the thing (but that’s not really the topic, is it?). To the casual observer, I’ve seemed to have fallen off the creative map. There’s been a silent war going on inside my head for control: the Creative Have’s and the Creative Have Not’s. The Have Not’s have been winning many battles but the Have’s are trying to win the war with an all-out assault on my brain. And, it’s working. Thankfully!

I’ve acquired the help of a very special friend, who I will introduce to you shortly. She’s been an immense help in rallying the troops.

The Meaning of Creativity

I find it fascinating to talk with other designers and ask them what makes them tick, what drives their internal engines to create and keep creating even in the face of self-doubt and frustration. The answers I get always lean towards an insatiable desire to put to real form what they’re seeing and feeling inside.

I went to a workshop yesterday for the Day Job in which there were two speakers giving a dual presentation, one talking about linear perspective (from the point of view of an artist) and one on how the human eye perceives perspective (from a scientific point of view). Oddly enough (or maybe not so oddly as I loved science in high school), I made the greatest connection with the scientific end of the conversation when the second speaker posted a photograph of someone’s pupil from the outside looking in. [Imagine a large circle filled with bright light and all around it dark brownish-red looking muscles surround it.] It was rather eery! I felt like I had traveled to an unrecognizable world I never thought I’d see. No, really. It was quite…humbling.

Anyway, the speaker was driving home the point that the human eye sees things backwards as it’s taken in and is reflected in the brain in order to look right side up, and that the world as seen is really quite orderly and beautiful. All things made from nature are so well designed. Think of a nautilus shell, or the structure of a beetle’s body. Or even the way a line of trees appear smaller as they go back in space and yet the trees furthest away aren’t necessarily smaller than those in front.

For me I took from that conversation that the world is indeed orderly, but people and our thoughts, visions, and ideas are more chaotic, raw. Our insatiable need to design and always move forward is like a constant need to take the chaos of our daily lives and inside our brain and make order of it in the physical sense, take the orderliness of what we see in the world and reflect it back through our own senses, our own eyes.

The Creative Process

I posted a question to Twitter yesterday asking designers (knit and crochet):

“Looking through inspirational images & yarn stash to determine next project. DESIGNERS: How do you get inspired?”

I would say a lot of my designing is a reflection of my environment, of what I like. I’m a beach person by nature having grown up at the Jersey Shore. I tend to like a more subtle, subdued color palette. As such, I’ve created a lot of designs that evoke that part of my personality. My latest design is no exception.

My response to the question I posed on Twitter was that I rummage through my yarn stash to see what I currently have and find images that inspire me at the moment. I knew I wanted to make a large handbag that I could take to the beach, whose design was easy enough manipulate in order to change the size of the bag easily, if a customer desired to do it. And I wanted to play with a new fiber. I happened to have several spools of Berwick Wraphia in Oatmeal, Green, and Turquoise I had purchased a couple years ago online and that seemed to fit the profile.

I went searching online for some cool Amy Butler (love her aesthetic!) fabric on fabric[dot]com to go with the feeling of the bag (but not match it perfectly) when I found this one (shown below). Something about the playfulness of the flowers, the use of color, and the fact that it was called, “August Fields” and my birthday is in August drew my eye and I bought a yard of fabric.

I did some searching online for beach bags (regular ones, not crochet as I tend to look towards mainstream fashion first) and came across this bag which I thought was interesting. It had a knit-like appearance to it and I wondered about how that would translate to crochet. I like that the rows of stitches seemed to start at the center and radiate out and back in at the other end, creating a curved effect. I set out to mimic that effect.

In order to create the curved shape, I had to employ short rows and linked stitches (to join the short rows to the main body of the work). The bag had some stability to it but not like I had imagined. Later on in the design process, I used green wraphia and did some surface crochet to go over the portion of the bag with the short rows, adding structure to it. That solved one problem and helped along an aesthetic issue: before doing the surface crochet, the curved shape wasn’t as pronounced. Now it was.

The remainder of the design, done in turquoise wraphia, came from seeing embroidery on off-white Mexican style, beachy shirts I used to see women wear to the beach as a child.

Lastly, the name: I wanted something that took someone to a certain time and connected them with a certain feeling. Montauk is a beachy place that boasts both a casual and upscale lifestyle, and that’s what I wanted to bag to feel like: polished, fun, but functional.

And that’s how a big bag called, “Montauk” was “born.”