My design process

So, today I wanted to tell you about my design processes. 

Running a small business often feels a bit like having a few extra heads would really help - there are so many different hats to wear! Today I thought I'd take you behind the scenes of three of my main creative processes: knitting pattern design, yarn dyeing and Woolbert comics.

I have a very active imagination and am always coming up with new ideas. Shiny object syndrome is absolutely a thing!! As such, inspiration comes from all sorts of places. Sometimes it's a colour that sparks an emotion, memory or picture in my mind; sometimes it's a lyric in a song (I am a self-confessed lyric geek!) or something somebody says; sometimes it's a place that I visit, or a feeling that a certain place gives me that I want to find a way of translating into knitting, fibre, or a comic. Sometimes it's casual conversations with my friends or with those in my Knitting Membership that gets the neurons tingling, and all of a sudden I'm creating a blanket kal! 

So once that inspiration strikes, what happens?

Let's start with knitting patterns and look at my current design, the Swash Shawl. This is something that I think will take a few iterations before it is ready to release. I know what I want it to represent - the final edges of the waves brushing along the beach before they flow away back into the sea. I think I'm getting there with how to create that, but it is complicated because each wave needs to grow out of the one before it. I don't know yet whether it will sit right as a shawl until I cast it off for the first time. In this case, the inspiration came from the yarn - a beautiful merino/silk dyed by Tanya of The Woolly Tangle that I bought at Wonderwool (along with a gorgeous velvet project bag!). I knew it had a plain colour friend in our stock in the shop, and put it together. It looks like tropical waters lapping on a pale sandy beach. 

Other designs are more fully formed from the beginning - I know what I'm doing and it more needs just worked through to make sure it works... but nomatter the pattern, I start in the same way. I create a new notebook on my reMarkable tablet, and I start with what yarn I'm using, what needles I'm using and how many stitches I'm casting on in what way... and then I knit it and write down every row that I do as I do it, being able to rub out the bits that I frog back when they don't work, and copy and paste the handwritten notes down the page for repeated patterns. 

That digital notebook has my entire brain in it (and thankfully on a cloud in case I ever lose it!) and has an entire folder of knitting designs going back 6 years to when I first bought it. Only once I'm happy with the pattern do I then re-knit it and write the finished pattern up onto Canva from my notes. (Canva over Word as I prefer the layout options!)

It doesn't end there! Each pattern that I release has been painstakingly worked out over months or even years for some designs as I retry or change things. They are then tech edited and, where possible, tested as well. But all of that is a collaborative process as well, with the tech editor sending back things I need to alter, and testers telling me what does and doesn't work. It's only once the pattern is realised that the design side of it finishes (and even then, sometimes I miss small errata!)

Yarn dyeing isn't quite as long a process, but it's still very thought-out. I have a large catalogue of colours that I've created recipes for, and they are all dyed onto 20g minis in a big basket in the dye-kitchen. When I am designing a colourway, I will get these mini samples out and put them together and decide how I want to mix them to create the mix of colours that I want to use. For the most part, I don't space-dye my yarns, but prefer a more marbled look, usually with 5-8 colours on a skein mixing together and creating infinitely more. Sometimes, one or more of the colours I want to use won't already be in my basket of samples, so I get the dye pots out and have a play, mixing dyes together until I create the exact hue I'm looking for. 

I will say at this point that I don't weigh my dyes, I do it by eye. I have a set water measurement, and I have a set 'tip of a teaspoon' size that I work to for the dye powder. Sometimes this becomes a 'tiny tip' for specific mixes. 

So my single colour recipes look like this:

Sunset - 4 x orange, 2 x Aztek gold, 1 x bright yellow.

And my colourway recipes look like this:

Morfa - blue, navy, brown, grey, delphinium blue, seaspray, olive brown. The underlined colour will be the one I will use as the 'main' to fill in any white bits or as an over/under dye first or last. 

Once I'm happy with the colours, it's then a case of applying them to the yarn in quantities that 'feel' right. I love how dyeing the same colourway on different bases creates completely different results! You can see that really clearly here on the Blodau Sych (dried flowers) yarns on a commercial superwash merino base Vs a small batch non-superwash British merino base. 

What about Woolbert? I have been very open about the fact that I have used AI as a tool to help me develop my Woolbert comic strip images. When I'm designing the Woolbert cartoons, it works in the same way as when I was originally designing the Woolbert logo. I know what I want it to be, and because my drawing and graphics skills are non-existent, (my stick men aren't even recognisable!) I have to get some help in order to get the images from my head onto the screen.

My ex was good at graphics, and so I sat with him around 9 years ago and created the original Woolbert logo. I said how I wanted it to look, I explained what I wanted changed etc, and he moved things around the screen and edited them so that it matched the image in my head. I now use the same process with AI. 

All of the ideas, all the cartoons, and the side characters are all things that are swirling around in my head. Again, I have folders on my reMarkable as well as on the notes app on my phone so that if I'm out and something occurs to me, I can get it down before I forget it (brain fog is a pain for that!) and can turn it into a post later on. I've taken to using multiple different programs to combine images, edit images, and get them looking the way that I want them to look. Although I'm not physically drawing him myself, every expression, joke, pose and scenario starts as an idea in my head. His personality, all his daftness and fun, that's all come through conversations with people over the last 8 years in this business. Woolbert often expresses how I feel as a crafter, and gives me the outlet to be able to poke a bit of fun at myself, and make things relatable. 

The design process of Woolbert took a while. I had the original logo Woolbert, but he needed to be a bit more characterful and also to be able to move around and do things, so he needed to become less of a ball of wool with a head and feet, and more a sheep with a ball of yarn for a body. Getting his expressions, his age etc took a LOT of toing and froing (and frustration! OMG you can't believe how difficult AI finds it to create a pair of knitting needles!!, or how stopping something looking babyish doesn't mean it needs to look old and wrinkly!) It isn't a simple request of 'please create Woolbert for me' and you get something, it's the same interactive process that I had all those years ago, just instead of another person operating the software, AI is the tool I'm working with. 

So whether it's a shawl inspired by waves, a new colourway or a sheep getting into crafting disasters, they all start from the same place: the idea. The fun bit is then the creative journey to turn them into a reality!

I hope you've enjoyed this little peek into the behind-the-scenes of my creative journeys!