I was listening to the Getting Loopy podcast interviewing Tracy St John and Brittany Tyler from Tangled Magazine about the Peanut Butter and Jelly projects: very similar sweaters designs, one in knitting and one in crochet. Mary Beth Temple laughed that you’d already have the schematics done, so it would save you time.
Reusing schematics sounded very good, so I called a meeting of the design team in my head.
The Patternist was enthusiastic, “Oh, that’s like when I was in college and I’d work up a sweater pattern from a friend’s sketch. Only, this time I’d have a sketch with definite, tested numbers already! I think I’ll re-make the spreadsheet, so it will be efficient. The last spreadsheet got wonky.
Butterfly, the Visual Inspiration Girl pouted a bit, “But we’ve already made that sweater – three times! I’ll be bored. And I wouldn’t have touched your spreadsheet. Quit looking at me.”
The patternist was about to say something about order and beauty when Momma Bear, the Realist about the Rest of Life knocked the meeting room door down, “None of you are around when the four year old gets me up in the middle of the night, and you all keep me awake too long – we don’t need new projects, we need to finish the ones we’ve already started…and earn some money!”
Everyone looked at the floor, and pretended to have very serious thoughts about washing dishes.
Butterfly piped up, “I’m bored of being serious, can I go look at Pinterest now?”
Momma Bear rolled her eyes and lumbered off. The door stayed smashed on the floor.
The Editor spoke for the first time, “There will be research involved. Who knows if there are openwork patterns in knitting that make Xs easily? But I think this project would re-use some work we’ve done, in a fresh way, that’s good business. Someone will have to search the stitch dictionaries, it may take a while.
Butterfly: Oh Goody! I love Barbara G Walker!
Editor: Well, I’m glad Butterfly is happy now, it would be nice if she stuck around for the whole job.
Butterfly: Your job is YOUR job. I’ll come back when you’re done and the pictures are posted. Maybe I’ll order the yarn – I love ordering yarn!
So I started the project.