My Pattern in Crochet Foundry Magazine
This week The Crochet Foundry Magazine published their March issue, including my pattern The Enniskerry Garden Cardigan. This is my second publication – with 2 more on the way with different publishers. Its been a roller coaster, and such a rewarding experience. Now I get to have ‘as published in’ on the landing page of this web site … whenever I eventually figure out how to do that, it will probably be about the same time I get the links to work so I have a functional shop for my patterns. In other words, probably not for a very long time.
But baby steps, things are very definitely going in the right direction!
Working on magazine commissions has many joys. One of the best parts has to be the day that the yarn support arrives. And working with Crochet Foundry magazine means the added perk of crochet hook support too! That’s one beautiful Furls hook, that let me fly my LGBT colours while creating the pattern.
The start of any project is my time. Sketch and swatch are fine, but its those first few rows that show how the stitch repeats and shaping are actually going to work out. Its a time full of promise and imagination. That’s the lure that keeps bringing me back to design over and over. In my teaching days, September was my month. New students to meet, new courses to write. I always felt envigorated by it. Colleges hated that time, and loved the finishing up months at the end of the year, when they could take satisfaction in drawing everything to a close. Spring in the classroom never said anything to me but chaos, exam pressure and panic. I hated it.
So it’s probably not surprising that it’s the final stages of finishing up a pattern that I stall on.
Stress hits as I get close to the finish. Is it good enough? I hate the way the shoulders sit. I should have used a different stitch to anchor the whole thing for the first three rows. Have I time to start from scratch again? No! No I absolutely don’t! James Joyce ones famously said ‘works of art are never finished, only ever finally abandoned’ and boy do I know that feeling!
Most of all, if you haven’t tried, you may not know just how hard it is to photo a cardigan on a hanger, and have it look well. There was no point getting a photo of it on myself, because it wouldn’t fit. I’m half way between an M and an L, so it depends on the fit which I opt for, but the sample I was asked to make was in a size S, and just wouldn’t go near me.
In the end, I parcelled it up, and sent it off, along with the pattern attached to an email. And braced for the tech editors commentary. Which wasn’t actually too bad at all. Lots of typos. I will be dyslexic until the day I die, after all, but no stitch count errors. Whereas on the previous pattern I had several to iron out with the TE, ad that boosted my confidence, and left me feeling like I am indeed getting the hang of this.
The absolute best moment of all when writing a pattern for a publisher has to be seeing the actual final version in print, though. My humble little cardigan looking so well on a real, live, fashion model, beside my pattern, all beautifully formatted.
