Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Textures

Photo by Micki Da Re
You might note that the title description for this blog is not only about tea knitting but about nature inspiring design.

Before I moved to the Pacific Northwest I was dreaming about the wonderful plant life I would find here. In the Northeast, the cold of winter limits the variety of plants you can grown. Don't get me wrong, the variety back there is still amazing, but give it warmer temps and lots of rain and...

The trees here are enormous. The plants, greener than green. The ground covered with blankets of foliage. So, a little break from the fiber action to post some recent forest and park pics from my outings. Enjoy.

















Friday, April 02, 2010

A Designer I Be?

How many years has it been, gentle readers, since I declared that I would write my designs down? I guess it took an actual job as a designer to force me to do it.

Since I've been partnering with Laura at Krafti-Kit last Summer, I've been much more in the role of designer than I ever thought. We had originally planned to purchase exclusive designers for the entire first year, but way sooner than that we've come to offer our own designs. It doesn't mean that we don't still WANT to work with designers. It's just been more time-efficient at times to do our own thing.

I'm going to start off by saying that one of my biggest time savers has been Knit Visualizer. I cannot say enough great things about this charting software that I've had for quite sometime now. I can use it for needlepoint as well as knitting and who knows what else?

One of my favorite parts of designing has been working with dyers like PicoAccuardi on projects like these socks, knitted in Maple Way. I'm working on a lace project using one of their yarns right now and I'm just loving it. More than just sock yarn!
Then I collared FibroFibers for a wool/bamboo blend for this crochet project (modeled by the ever lovely Petra):
An entire sweater? Yeah, but baby sized:
There have been some smaller projects too:
Oh yeah, knitting with beads too:
And then there's the needlepoint:
At this point, you might think, Wow! That's a lot of designs. Truth is though, that I have a basket of ones that are still in the works that haven't made it to market yet.

I've also been thinking about pattern writing "guildlines" that would be "approved" by some authoritative source. I think it's great that we have the freedom to do things as we like, but sometimes I do like the idea of agreed upon pattern guidelines. What do you all think?

Back to the drawing board, literally!