Design vs. Reality

The process of designing something out of an image in your head tends to be long and hard. Currently, I've been spending my time trying to design and test out the patterns I want in my collection, but it's hard to get things just right. Each step of the design process takes a lot of effort and consideration before its execution, and sometimes, even hard-core planning yields unexpected results.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for unexpected results. Sometimes, a mistake turns out to be something I like, but those tend to be pretty rare. A good example is designing beanies, my vice. I can design sweaters, cardigans, socks, scarves, but try as I might I come up pretty short when it comes to designing beanies. No matter how much I research the stitching, the pattern, the fit, it always turns out too tight, too long, too small, too big, too something that makes it too ugly for me to put out into my shop. Just last week, I decided to test the tumulus beanie waters again and tried to make a beanie for my upcoming Fall/Winter collection. The calculations were right, I swatched, the pattern and measurements looked good, but when I came halfway into the beanie I realized it was way too tight to fit onto my head, which is small compared to other average adult heads. I also didn't predict how the pattern would look stretched out (ugly). Dejected by my failure, the unfinished beanie sat on my desk for a good week before I started to write up this post which gave me enough courage to unravel it. Starting over from scratch is never easy, especially after you've put in a lot of work into something that failed, but I've been learning that something will almost never be perfectly right the first time around.

Sometimes (a lot of the times) people ask me how I can make the same things over and over, or make something, not like it, and start over from scratch. To be quite honest its never easy, but for me, the journey of making the perfect finished piece that a customer is waiting for is worth all the unraveling and headaches. Constantly knitting calms me, it gives me peace, and I'll never stop.

P.S: If you haven't already, please check out my gofundme page that I have set up to fund my Fall/Winter collection! Any amount of support is much appreciated!