You can see Artesanitarium Designs on Ravelry, I appreciate her organic cables.
You as a designer questions:
What is your design process?
Idea, create, photo, write.
I’ve tried write the pattern while I’m knitting but it never works.
What influences your style?
Now? Today, in this time of my life? I don’t know… (this is where I realize this is an interview and I should think about it :D) Influences? Like not the idea, but what influences how and if the idea comes to life? Definitely these three things: Is it easy to describe and make, yarn weight and needle size.
When I started? I had two Finnish designers I looked up to when I begun (still do btw) Mari Muinonen / tikru and Suvi Simola If you take a look at their work you can see how big of an impact they had on me as a newbie 🙂
What about designing and producing patterns are you most adept at, what parts are you most fond of, and what parts are challenging? (Pattern Grading, the last week of editing, coming up with a name for a project, self promotion?)
Most adept? Probably the knitting part 🙂 Names are easy too, if the name doesn’t come to me by the time the pattern is written, I have a system! It’s either the random word generator or Wikipedia, clicking on words until I find the perfect one 🙂 For example Aiden Reversible Socks got their name from the main character in Watch Dogs, the game we were playing at the time.
Almost everything else is a struggle, more or less. I even had to google the word “adept”. As a non-native English speaker the language is challenging at times… As long as I don’t realize I sound a bit…hm..off I’m fine!
Grading is something I rather not do at all! I have a really nice sweater design just laying around coz I have zero interest in doing the grading XD My brain don’t do math. Numbers are white noise to me, really. It helps if I see them, but I still don’t like them!
I love the tendrils on Sprouts Shawlette, when you are designing a realistic motif, do you ever have trouble knowing when it’s simplified enough to make it simple to create, and when it’s lost the detail you wanted?
Thank you <3 The cables on the Sprouts were a nightmare! I got the inspiration from the movie Corpse Bride, and the cable pattern was just laying in my sketch book for years until last summer when I participated in the Happiness Make-A-Long 2017 as a designer and decided it was time! In my head the cables were a 3 hour job… Turned out it wasn’t, more like 3 weeks! One set of cables is represented over 6 different cable chart, it had to be done in order for anyone to understand how to do it! I owe a whole lot to Mary E Rose for her help with taming the cables. Fortunately I didn’t loose any of the detail, and I still think it was worth the time! I have at least two projects in mind where I’m going to use the same cable pattern 🙂 So no, I don’t have trouble knowing, but I wont make a sacrifice either. If I can’t make it look how I want and it be simple enough to recreate, I won’t write the pattern. There is just no point. But if people ask me about a design that has no pattern, I will help them best I can 🙂
You as a Giftalong designer:
What have you learned from the promotion?
Other designers are awesome and always ready to help each other out, I’m not as intimidated by them as I were last year 🙂
You as someone who likes to make things questions:
What is your usual process on a fiber project, for instance, do you start with a yarn, a cute pattern, a need you’ve noticed, something exciting you saw in a movie you want to copy, or a technique you want to learn – then what do you do next and then what?
Usually it is the need to create. Sometimes just to get rid of some yarn, but mostly to create 🙂 So need and something I saw in a movie I want to bring into the world, like the Sprouts Shawlette from Corpse Bride.
(Christine interrupting – the shawl collar on the pastor in the movie, I couldn’t find a photo marked for commercial use)
Hardly ever a need to learn new things! I might have learned a new thing and then used it, like in Cheshire Shawl the vertical stripes are kind of mosaic stitch that I just had learned 🙂
When I have the idea, I stash dive or shop for yarn if necessary. After that it’s knit,photograph and write the pattern. Then tech edit and test, promote, publish, promote more.
Does anything intimidate you in knitting or crochet?
YES! Fair isle or stranded knitting, lace knitting, very thin yarn in knitting. In crocheting it’s the heavier yarns that bothers me. I’ve always wanted to crochet a sweater but every time I do that I end up looking like one of the Teletubbies coz the crocheted fabric is so much thicker… Maybe I should try thinner yarn there… Se this is how the projects are born!
When you want to learn something, do you look it up in a book, on U-tube, or seek a real person to teach you?
Google and YouTube! If we’d had YouTube when I was in school there’s no way to tell how big I would be today!
Any repetitive motion disorders due to knitting or crochet? How do you deal with them?
I’ve had the tension neck syndrome for years due to my day job as a chef. I got diagnosed with Fibromyalgia a couple of years ago, but I won’t let those things react with my knitting! I stretch, move my shoulders, keep elbows close to my sides and do all sorts of self care 🙂 I need to do it so I can function at all.
What makes you buy a pattern (lovely photo, the story of the project, it looks do-able, it looks slightly challenging…)
I’m terrible at following patterns. When I buy a pattern it’s because I want to know how the design or a detail of it is done, like out of curiosity and to learn! Sometimes the pretty picture too! Pretty pictures are really important to me 🙂 A great design can be forgotten and go unnoticed because of a bad picture.
Thank you Annina!