So once I decided to become a designer, I had a monumental mind shift. It was like giving myself permission to knit like a crazy woman and all of the guilt magically disappeared. I was so excited. But now what? How do you actually become a knitwear designer? There wasn’t exactly a step by step guide that I could easily download from the internet. This was before Shannon Okey’s book The Knitgrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design was published. Which has a wealth of information and lead me to discover Whitehead Light Station (that’s for another post).
So basically I just started designing. I love a lot of color and have a great love of fair isle and color work knitting. I had recently discovered one of my now-favorite yarns, Kauni Effect at one of my favorite LYS’s, Knit Purl. (Can anyone assist me in the correct pronunciation of “Kauni”? Is it like Connie or Cowny?) I really love this yarn because even though you are only using one colorway, it looks like you’re using several different colors of yarn. So I designed my first sweater, the XO Cardigan. This is where the inspiration for a book idea was born. I’ve designed several other sweaters and am working on matching accessories.
I quickly discovered that it’s fairly easy for me to design and knit a sweater. The hard part, and what I am currently working on, is getting the patterns written, graded, edited and ready to be sold. More on this topic later. Here is a sampling of some of my sweaters:
And the journey continues…..
Shellie
Your sweater patterns are just stunning and I’m sure you’ll soon have the rest of the logistics figured out. Then there’ll be a long line up waiting to buy your patterns for sure.
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Kauni – if it’s even somewhat Hawaiian, it would be pronounced “Kah-oo-nee.” You MUST teach me how to do this!
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