Creative Journey: It started with a stitch!
How one stitch solved a problem and became a bestseller!
Whether you’re a novice or a master at the art of knitting just picking up a set of needles and ball of yarn doesn’t get you very far. The foundation of all our creative efforts are the stitches that we choose to use. It doesn’t matter if it’s garter stitch or a complex lace stitch, we need those stitches! And for those of us who design knitting patterns, enjoy freestyle knitting or simply want to improve our technique, we all know there are hundreds of stitch dictionaries and thousands of online examples of stitch patterns at our disposal.
But sometimes we can’t find quite the right stitch and this happened to me when I started designing my Dune Collection of patterns back in 2021. Now contrary to popular belief this collection was not named after one of my favourite Science Fiction novels. I know I’m a nerd, and I know I was working on the first design from the collection: Dune around the same time as Denis Villeneuve’s first part of Dune hit movie theatres, but that isn’t how it got its name! The name came from the fact that I wanted to expand my stitch vocabulary to include more cable stitches.
Because I’ve said it before, I may have been knitting for over 40 years and I know I design knitwear, but I’m not the most technically gifted knitter. I’ve always loved patterns that are simple to knit with a neat design feature as opposed to the most complex stitch patterns or colourwork. And when I design my patterns, I always aim to capture the simple to knit with a neat design feature vibe. And cables for me were not something I would ever say I was good at. I was in awe of my Gran and Mum when I saw them deftly creating cable patterns when I was growing up. But when I started having a go myself my tension was always tight. And life’s too short for stitches you don’t like so I avoided cable patterns for years.
When you start designing though you see ideas in your head and I knew I had to get over my reluctance to cable if I wanted to recreate get some of my designs. So I turned to my trusted stitch dictionary and there in the cable section was something called Sand Cable. And I’ll be honest with you, I rather fell in love with it. It looked more open with a beautiful flow and when you knit this cable it doesn’t feel tight so you get over the tension issue. That’s why I would recommend Sand Cables to anyone dipping their toes into cable knitting for the first time.
But I needed another stitch to go with this soft, meandering Sand Cable. Obviously there was stocking stitch involved, but I wanted something angular to offset the cosy central panel. I had the idea of a chevron shape because I love how they stack to give not only a sense of direction, but the feeling of a sturdy path to be walked. This though was where the issue arose. Because I wanted Dune’s large cable to gather around the neck, I needed to knit the cowl flat. All the chevron stitch patterns I’d seen were horizontal and I needed my chevrons to be vertical. And I was very close to giving up on the idea when I picked up some completed samples of my Something For The Weekend shawl that featured in my last Creative Journey. (You can read that here)
You see, I remembered that in the lace eyelet section of Something For The Weekend there is a stitch with a left leaning slip stitch pass over. And it suddenly dawned on me that I could reverse this to create a right leaning slip stitch pass over which when placed next the left leaning part created a vertical chevron shape. And it worked! I had the border stitch that I wanted and normally this would be the end of the story, but it isn’t!
Fast forward a couple of months. It’s mid December 2021 and the Omicron variant of COVID was surging. My Mum was still vulnerable due to her cancer, I made the decision to stay at home and not travel to spend time with my family for Christmas again. Which was fine except on December 15th I realised that the only person I didn’t have a Christmas present for was my Dad and I needed to get something to post down by the Tuesday. I couldn’t find anything, but again as I was tidying away my samples, the chevron stitch jumped out at me.
I rushed into town the next morning, I purchased 3 balls of chunky yarn, got out my 6mm needles…I was working on the premise of big yarn, big needles, quick knit!…and I cast on a scarf for my Dad. It took me two and half days to complete what is now my best selling pattern: Scarf Number 2. And this pattern led to Cowl Number 2 and my upcoming Cowl Number 2.1 pattern that is launching on Thursday 14/03/2024.
So it does rather emphasise how important stitches are and why we have so much fun knitting them!
Until next time…
Loved reading about how you dreamed up this design. It’s beautiful! 🧡
So clever!