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It's been a really busy few last few months at work. Cecily Glowik MacDonald, Carrie Bostick Hoge and I have all been busy little bees working to get the Fall 2009 booklets tech edited, proofed and layed out. Finally, they're back from the warehouse and have begun to ship. I'm more than relieved to finally have that season completed and on its way into stores. It was a challenge.
There were close to 90 patterns throughout the 7 new booklets. Fall always has more patterns than Spring, but in the five years I've worked at CEY, I don't ever recall their being over 70 Fall patterns. I think we all learned a lot this season, and the future will hopefully run more smoothly and be less stressful because of it. I like to think that anyway, only time will tell.
Looking at the photos above, of the three designs I have in the fall collection, I'm reminded of the design process for one of them. The Miracle V-Neck Cardigan, pictured on the left, was conceived while sitting by a campfire, while on a weekend camping trip with James. I was swatching with some burgundy Miracle. There were some pencil scribbles, and erase marks covering a sheet of graph paper, which I interpreted as the stitch pattern. I love working in ribs with Miracle—it really pulls together, even after blocking and washing. I remember enjoying the process of figuring out how to get the 1 x 1 ribbing to flow evenly into the wheat pattern, while not decreasing too many, or too few stitches. If you've ever worked with Miracle, you may know that frogging it is nearly impossible—similar to trying to frog mohair—so more than one swatch, and ball of yarn was necessary to get this figured out.
That time spent swatching on this camping trip wasn't about designing the sweater, it was about learning how to make the sweater design work. I love technique. I love to challenge myself to use different techniques. While this design doesn't have anything terribly complex in it, it's certainly a fun collection of little things I enjoy doing—working without side seams; lace stitch patterns; ribbing in Miracle; and a cable trim around the neck edge.
Lately, I've been challenging myself to come up with simple things. It's a lot more difficult for me than you might imagine. Even if it begins as something simple, I often think of little ways of making it *better*—like, we could just add some short rows in there to make it flare...
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