Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Designing a Sweater: Prepping

The yarn arrived for my next sweater design - and pretty fast too!  I ordered on Saturday and it arrived on Tuesday.


I ordered some other goodies as well.  I've been to WEBS once, its not far - about 1 1/2 hours or so.  I had wanted to go for a long time and ended up going when I was laid off, because that's when I had time to go with my former coworker - but then I had no money, LOL!


I ordered two of the things I saw during that visit this time.  The Bryspun scissors where listed as assorted colors and one will be picked for you.  I took a shot and put in the comments of my order that I would prefer purple if possible please :o)  Well I got purple!!!  I had also seen these awesome crocheted sheep stitch markers and remembered them, so those were in the shopping cart as well!  Not pictured, I also ordered some US 6 Knitter's Pride Karbonz that I am hoping to use for this sweater project, but I'll have to swatch and see if this is the size that I want to use.

Next up is winding a skein and swatching.  The least I am going to do today is wind a skein.  I am working overnight again this week 11pm-7am - and I keep having the thought of - oh I'll do that this weekend.  Well I am also on a 4 on 2 off schedule now ... there are no weekends, LOL!

I also have to take all my measurements and record them somewhere that I can find them again.  I took most of them in October for the 30 Day Sweater Challenge, but as usual - have no idea where the worksheet is with all of that information.  The measurements will probably have to wait for the weekend - so I can grab my husband to help me measure.

While I'm swatching and doing measurements, I have to get more familiar with GIMP so that I can create a clean and proportional schematic for the pattern.  I use GIMP a lot to crop, resize and touch up photos, but really have no idea how half the tools work.

I figured I'd make a list here of the tasks that I need to accomplish, some may happen simultaneously, but I put them in some sort of logical order for now.

Sweater Design To Do's:

  1. Select and Order Yarn
  2. Swatch
  3. Measurements (Swatch and Body)
  4. Write the Pattern
  5. Grade the Pattern for Additional Sizes
  6. Name the Pattern
  7. Knit the Sweater!
  8. Block the Sweater
  9. Take Photos
  10. Format and Finalize Document
  11. Publish the Pattern

7 comments:

Wanderingcatstudio said...

I don't normally swatch when I'm knitting - but it's a definite must for sweater design - that's for sure!

Anonymous said...

You've been to WEBS????? I am SO jealous!

The scissors are really pretty. I didn't even know Bryspun made scissors.

elns said...

ha! swatching! yet another reason why I'm not cut out to ever be a designer! I'm enjoying seeing how the mind unfolds to take on this exciting project! I'm with Dee, super jealous of your WEBS visit and the purple scissors!

elns said...

oh and ps: you're the April giveaway winner! I left you a msg on Ravelry :)

kathy b said...

Your preparations are so great. That should make of rsuccess

geeky Heather said...

Exciting!! Can't wait to see the progress!!

autumngeisha said...

So cool that you are designing a sweater! I have a binder with lots of sweater design inspirations, but am too lazy to actually come up with a feasible design. I much rather have someone else do all the hard work :)