Things I am learning

Although I have dabbled in designing my own knitting work, as you can see from the sidebar, I've always felt terribly fraudulent. It's reasonable enough to make an egg cosy as eggs don't tend to vary much in size and the fit isn't crucial. However, when you get to designing for real life people, whether it's for babies or adults, it all gets a bit more important*. I decided I should invest my time more into knitting other people's patterns to learn more about knitting and shaping and fitting and all those tricky type things. Fortunately for me, I have lots of time on my hands and lots of knitting I want to get done. And even better, my friend Erssie happens to have plenty of work to give me. Which brings me to what I learnt at the weekend:

Lesson 1 When working for a friend, make sure you find out who knitted the jumper you are seaming.
Think twice before you send rude texts.
Or, What I Didn't Know About Rules.

Fortunately, I did think twice before I sent the grumpy text and then sent a fairly reasonable email mentioning the fact that all ball changes for a jumper had taken place in the middle of a row. But why? When everyone knows you change at the edge of a row. I got particularly narky because I was worried about making it look bad when I was weaving in ends. I am only a recent professional knitter and this being only one of the first of my jobs, I was particularly keen to make a good impression. I got a very thoughtful response from Erssie (Oy! I knitted it...). In this case, the seams had to be as minimally bulky as possible and changing balls at the edge of rows just didn't work. I felt very foolish and then very pleased. This is what I had hoped for - increasing my experience and understanding of knitting and being paid for the privilege.

Noblin Lesson:
Sometimes it is worth ignoring rules if they are constrictive and when breaking them gives you a better finish, isn't that what we are working towards? Rules for the sake of convention are pointless. This is the first project I've knitted where it was worth breaking this particular rule, and I admit that every other project I completed has benefited from having the ball changes at the edges. I'm not about to throw my rulebook out the window just yet but it reminded me that we are not slaves to the norm. Knitting is as much about creativity as any other art form, with masters to study and conventions to flout. So there, many lessons learned.

I finished Divas Don't Knit and it was lovely and there were no awkward sad bits where someone has a sudden terrible death. I do recommend it if you like that kind of thing.

Noblin sightings:


*Ysolda has just published a sizing guide to help here
How very kind!


HELLO, BEV!
I'm so glad you like the scarf and leaf patterns. I'll look into putting the leaf pattern up for you on the next post!