A Creative Journey: The JEE
How one pattern helped me and is now helping others.
Designing is a funny old game! It’s one of the most frustrating things that you can do, but it’s also one of the most fun! And it must be because I wouldn’t have been designing things for nearly 21 years if it wasn’t enjoyable! But what makes it so frustrating are often things that are out of your control and…to a point…that was certainly the case with The JEE.
I think we safely say that the Pandemic affected all of us in some way. For me, my wedding related business became unviable, living away from my family was hard enough, but with my Mum was going through cancer treatment it was even harder, and I couldn’t see partner. So needing to keep myself occupied and my mind healthy, I turned to my knitting and started working on a business idea that had been milling around in my head for quite a while. And that was when the first iteration GoneAwool came to be!
Now I’ve previously spoken about how GoneAwool started, but it was the exploration of stitch patterns for the blog that led me to what is now The JEE as well as the start of Suzanne Ellsmore Designs.
This design came about because I love a knitted scarf, but I dislike of an inelegant reverse side. So I decided to explore reversible stitch patterns and, for a bit of fun, decided to knit a sampler scarf to to discuss on the blog.
I selected four stitch patterns that on paper should look weird together, but in my mind’s eye looked good. These were Double Basket Weave, Moss Diamond Lozenge, Rib & Welt and Parallelogram. In my head, I also saw it knitted up in four tonal colours. So I chose the yarn and having recently fallen for cotton yarns, I ordered myself a few balls of King Cole Giza cotton in four colours from a dark grey through to pale cream. This was where things started to go awry!
Remember at the time we were reliant on buying yarn online and what looked like a nice colour palette, proved to be not quite so good in real life. So I ditched the silver shade (don’t worry, no yarn went to waste in this venture!) and began to knit up the scarf. All looked good.
And then the next issue came to light. The cream seemed to knit up looser than the greys. I spoke to my Mum about this because she used to work with and test dyes for industrial use and she explained about dye density and basically said lighter coloured yarns can sometimes cause this problem. But the knock on effect of this issue proved disastrous for the project. The lighter yarn wasn’t holding the stitch patterns very well so as the scarf was growing it stretched more than it should…and I wasn’t even half way done! There was, unfortunately, only one thing I could do: frog it! And as I say, none of the yarn went to waste!
It would have been quite easy for me to give up on the project at this point. I’ll admit that at the time I felt quite deflated and the pressures of lockdown and not being able to travel to see how my Mum was beginning to get to me. Speaking to her everyday wasn’t really enough. But we often talked about my plans business and ideas and when it came to this reversible sample scarf, she was very enthusiastic.
That was when it struck me. If Mum liked the idea of this scarf, it could be her Birthmas (joint Birthday and Christmas) present. Creating this scarf with her now in mind, gave me a positive focus. So flush with doing all the maths for the project, I decided to revamp the design a little and do a two colour 4ply wool based version: one neutral colour and one bold. And so off I went to the internet to find the yarn. This was when the next curve ball was sent hurtling towards me!
I’d ordered a camel colour for the main body of the scarf and a bright orange for the end and section breaks. This was what arrived! Apparently the lavender colour was the closest substitute to the camel colour and weight available, and again my plan was not going very well!
But there was a saving grace! I had 11 balls (over 1400m) of the lavender DK yarn which meant that, with a bit more fiddling with the design and maths to take account of the differing yarn weight and another note book, I could still create a gorgeous, reversible scarf to gift my Mum. And this was that scarf, a scarf that she loved and that helped keep her warm until the very end.
But we’ve still not reached the end of this knitting pattern’s journey! Because although this was the first design that I committed to a notebook, I didn’t intend to publish this or any pattern to be honest. And yet after a few months of realising that the design itch wasn’t going away, well…here we are!
The trouble was, I’d gifted the scarf and I do think it’s quite bad form to ask for it back just to take some pictures for a pattern. But also the yarn I’d used for Mum’s scarf had been discontinued so there was a possibility I’d have to do some more pattern fiddling and maths with a new yarn. And it was Mum’s scarf, and I wanted to keep it special for her.
But Mum kept asking if I was going to publish the pattern and I resisted until she got pneumonia about 2 years ago. Something then made me think that maybe I should look at immortalising this scarf. And I also decided that if I did publish it, this would become a charity pattern with donations going to cancer charities. I’ll discuss this more in another post, but the charity I chose to support with 50% of the pattern’s sales proceeds was and still is until October this year, Cancer Research UK.
So the notebook came out, I fiddled with the design and maths again, and the pattern called Scarf Number 3: The JEE (Mum’s initials) was published in February 2023.
And that I hoped would be the end of the story for a little while, at least. But six months later, my Mum passed away much sooner than we expected and it seemed fitting that I changed the name of the pattern to simply The JEE.
I hope you enjoyed reading this little story, and if you would like to purchase a copy of this beautifully textured and cosy scarf pattern knowing that you are also helping those who currently have this terrible disease as well their families and future patients, then it is available here.
I’ll be back with another Creative Journey post in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime…
Happy Knitting!
Just beautiful! And the story to go with it makes it so much more personal. Mom’s continue to guide us and believe in us always, don’t they??