Patterns! Changes! & Designing!

I opened the pattern book I bought, and I fell in love with this ruffled scarf. It just looked so pretty. So I started it, followed it 100% to the letter. For me it was just way too long, it felt awkward when I put it on. Thats when I discovered that patterns aren't perfect, and if it's not working, well change it!

The nice thing about using a pattern is that you have direction, a concept, and a goal for what your end result will be. With inspiration from the first ruffled scarf pattern I followed I thought about what I didn't like, and made a few adjustments. Thats how the Double Ruffle Scarf came to being. The great thing about trying a bunch of different patterns is learning the different ways a stitch can be used, and the shapes it can create. Sometimes adjustments are really simple, like using a different sized hook than the pattern asks for, or making the sleeve pieces for a sweater seperately and sewing them on instead of trying to make them attached and manuevering the sweater around for who knows how long, or changing the count of rows or stitches to fit a persons measurements.

I really love all of the things I've made, I just enjoy seeing it come together. One of my favorites was a set I made for the daughter of a friend. Summer Stripes blanket and pillow. It was a challenge, being the second pattern I tried to follow. I made a simple mistake for almost the first half of the blanket, on one end I was adding 1-2 stitches every row, so the whole blanket was wrinkled and crooked on one end. I counted, and counted and counted some more, and then it dawned on me what I had done.  Pulled it all out back to the first row and started again. I'm so glad I did, because it is so pretty now. And my friends daughter loves it, she uses it all the time. That was hugely satisfying for me to see how excited she was when I gave it to her.

Designing, the largest photo on my blog- hairbands someone paid me to design and make. She had one photo of a knit hair band she had found somewhere. I did searching for designs of different flowers, tested, and tried a few to see what I would be the best on the band. After some measuring, lots of counting, doing a sample band as a reference, I put together the hairbands in the photos with her requested colors. I have to say it was fun, painstaking, but fun.