I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw EntwinedLoop‘s Tahesha the dragon-ess pattern on someone’s sweater (sorry, I didn’t keep track of the post, it was great through!) I followed their links to Ina’s patterns on Ravelry and asked her if she’d write about her design process, and here it is!
The idea
I came across two cabled dragon projects [1, 2] on Ravelry without a pattern around June 2017. It immediately caught my eye – such a great motif. I wanted to try myself to design ‘own’ dragon… little did I know how long it would take 😉
How does one decide on which kind of a dragon? What dragons were around? I looked for tattoo/logo-type images as cables would be a bit like bold strokes, black and white, cable or no cable. Only so much details like ‘shading’ as in pencil drawings can be done with knitting. Then I started sketching until I had a fair idea of what I wanted:
A) A dragon big enough as a motif on a sweater in a DK/worsted weight yarn.
B) A kind of visual symmetry even though the dragon’s body isn’t really symmetric.
C) Smooth and visually pleasing cables lines that have dynamics and grace.
I decided to go with the right sketch and would see how it turns out.
I- cord cables
One problem was, that I didn’t know of any method for horizontal cabling. But there was a sentence in one of the the afore mentioned dragon’s project notes: “…When the body went straight up with no diagonal slant, every 3rd row, I put in a sort of modified I-cord row…“
That gave me the idea not to use it vertically but horizontally, to basically combine an I-cord bind off and cast on straight after each other over a few stitches. That should make a kind of I-cord or ‘faux’ horizontal cable. And it did 🙂
One can either move existing cable stitches horizontally or start a horizontal cable with a provisional cast on for the cable stitches and knit the cable from there in both directions.
The design process
Trial and error! And a lot of that, I nearly gave up more than once…
I started with the sketch and an overlaid knitters grid. That just didn’t work: too many ‘things’ were going on and the sketch was not detailed enough. But it did give me a rough idea about the indented proportions.
I decided to knit parts: heads, wings, necks… finding out what kind of shapes, of increases and decreases or connections of cable lines I would like best. I would chart the cable lines the way I thought they would work, knit them, *adjust and re-knit*… **repeat any number of times 😉
The spiral at the bottom was the first part I was working on in connection with the I-cord cables. It took quite a while to work that out, but once the spiral was done it never changed much over the design process.
As I initially wanted the transition from the spiral to the torso a kind of interwoven cable lines I decided to divide the body into a couple of cables running beside each other. It gave me some kind of easy control to move the line of the belly and back differently. Plus, at it’s widest the torso is 11 stitches across, too much for one cable. I was thinking what other ways to try out (decreases/increases, cabling in ‘steps’, one big cable with yarn over(s) in the row before and release it/them for the cable), but the torso/neck worked out really well pretty much in the first try so I left it with the 3 cables beside each other.
After two months basically working on it every day I needed to knit something else where I would see a result and a long break followed.
In May 2018 I came back to the design and gave it a try to put the parts I had together. That was quite a disaster! The proportions didn’t really fit, the cable lines were all but smooth and graceful… it looked pretty terrible.
I changed some of the design, changed the wings completely and the transition from the spiral to the torso. The “adjust and re-knit*…. **repeat any number of times” followed again. Slowly a shape emerged I could live with… I liked the overall shape and thought the cable lines were quite smooth already – but still, somehow there was something missing! I just didn’t ‘see’ it…
By that time another 3 months working basically every day on the dragon had gone by and I was already thinking of putting it aside for another break as it finally hit me – nearly all the cable lines where of the same width, big bold lines – not contrast, not detail! I added a few smaller lines between the cables, gave the outer cable line a few crossed stitches – and that was finally it :)))
My project notes on Ravelry from August, 20 read:
“It’s 4 in the morning and my dragon is haunting and depriving me of sleep BUT I am extremely happy with the wing I just finished! Hope the other one is easy to adjust to the structure and THEN I am nearly there :)))!!!”
And 3 days later Tahesha was ‘born’. I was finally happy with my work. It took another month doing some adjustments, mainly the top of the wings and the little lines became parallel to each other. But being so close there were no more thoughts of another break… I was much closer to a Happy Dance 🙂
Summary
It was a very iterative process for me with a lot of trial and error and frustration at times. I don’t know how often I heard: Are you STILL with that dragon? But exciting at the same time when shapes started to emerge or my kids brought their friends in to show them ‘the dragon’ 🙂
In my experience, the cable lines sometimes developed their own ‘dynamics’. Some bends I thought would look nice and smooth, didn’t. Others that I thought to have, for instance, too big a part of vertical in it, turned out to be nice curves.
The whole process was such a journey in learning, perseverance, trying out new techniques, writing down a pattern for the first time, gaining experience… I definitely will try out more complex cable designs and have a few more sketches I could myself try on 🙂
It will take time but all in all, I would go about it the same way:
1. Sketch the general shape
2. Overlay a knitters grid for rough proportions
3. Knit parts or details
4. Bring the parts together
5. Adjust until happy with the overall shape
6. Think about contrast/details to add
I would like to thank everybody who accompanied me on my journey, if it was by giving me encouragement, doing the test knitting, giving me feedback or leaving comments. It wouldn’t have been the same without you and it was an overwhelming, unexpected reception my fellow knitters gave Tahesha. And thank you, Christine, for giving me the chance for the interview on your blog 🙂
[1] https://www.ravelry.com/projects/teerling/abstract-dragon
[2] https://www.ravelry.com/projects/teerling/here-be-dragons
My Pleasure Ina!