A Collaboration with me, the Editor, the Yarn Dyer and You, the Knitter.
I’ve expected projects to look lovely, and editors to be fun to chat with in e-mail, but I never expected to collaborate to this level or to laugh out loud at the jokes this much as I have working on the kapow Cowl.
For me, it started with the question, “What else can I do with a Christmas Tree Increase?” This lead to developing a bauble that lies flat like a dot. Then I wondered, what if I made the size and placement of the dots dependent on a color run in some hand dyed yarn?
A Hundred Ravens had just put out a call. When I sent in my submission, I though that the idea was like Rachel Henry’s Mind the Gap
I was delighted to have a submission accepted. So delighted that the kids ran into the computer room to find out if I’d hurt myself; because I was yelling so loud! Even better, the editor was Rachel herself! She thought the dots looked like speech bubbles in classic comics, so she and Kate of a Hundred Ravens created a yarn in classic comic colors for this pattern. (!)
My husband said I should knit the sample while watching the Avengers. I said the music is great! But I can’t knit to that movie; it’s too visual in it’s storytelling. That didn’t stop my guys from humming the theme song whenever they saw me.
I had originally a fussy method of attaching the dots. A few rounds showed me that I needed a simpler method. Once I started up again, the inside of the cowl turned out to have a cool, calm pattern of it’s own. Bingo! A mild mannered alter ego.
This fabric trait inspired the photo shoot – and fun photo editing. Rachel wrote the romance text for the pattern, and I love it.
So far we have me, the Editor, the Yarn Dyer, the Photographer and the Model collaborating, but it goes further. When you knit the pattern, You choose which color runs will be the background, and which ones will be the dots.