Weekly Stitches (12)

We had a little break from the Weekly Stitches posts while I shared the 12 Patterns of Christmas – which was so much fun. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.So where were we with Weekly Stitches? This really does mirror my knitting life right now… starting one thing, then being gently (or not so gently!) distracted by lots of other knitting.Looking back at Week 11 reminded me why I started writing these weekly blogs in the first place – to keep myself organised. At that point, I was right in the middle of designing a new scarf…Which brings me to this week…Finished – finally! Three weeks, many versions, and a reminder that slow creativity is real creativity.I did it! After those weeks of knitting, ripping out, knitting again, not liking it, trying again, and repeating that whole cycle more times than I can count… I finally have a finished piece that matches the design in my head. It’s always a special moment – that quiet, satisfying “yes, this is it.”Funny thing is, now that this version is complete, I might go back to the first sample with fresh eyes and appreciate it more. Sometimes time softens our expectations enough to see something differently.This whole back-and-forth process reminded me so much of my old days working for a knitting manufacturer. Back then, my designs were machine-knitted in a factory. I would send off the design with all the measurements and instructions, and the first sample would come back… and it was never the final one! Depending on the factory (and the budget!), we’d go through second, third, even fourth samples. Then a pre-production sample. Then a production sample.I was only a junior designer, so I never saw what happened if the production sample was wrong – but I have my suspicions. Maybe those dodgy versions are the ones that end up in certain places! In the days before the internet you knew exactly what you were getting because you could see and touch it in real life.There was even one woven production run where they forgot to put pockets in. The pockets were there visually – but you couldn’t actually put your hands in them. The whole lot was rejected. Although, interestingly, fake pockets are now a budget-fashion trend… so I do wonder if that mistake planted the seed.The lesson from all of this?Designing something new takes time. It doesn’t magically happen the moment you draw an idea or pick up your needles.And in our world of 90-second reels – where people appear to paint, build, renovate, bake, knit and crochet entire masterpieces in no time – it can feel as if you’re doing something wrong when your own work takes hours, days or weeks.But real creativity needs flow. And flow needs focus.If you’ve been reading these posts, you’ll know I often knit when watching TV – that’s how I relax – but it has to be easy knitting. Designing is different. It needs concentration. And, ironically, while writing this very paragraph, I did the exact thing I’m warning against: an email pinged, I clicked it, and I lost my flow completely. It wasn’t urgent. It could have waited.Maybe the answer is small pockets of single-tasking. Ten or twenty minutes where that’s all you do. It feels like a luxury in such a fast world – but it might be exactly what designing (and knitting) needs.And now for the part that makes all the ripping-back worth it: the design is finished!Next, I need to decipher my notes, write up the pattern, and send it off to my wonderful test knitters. And then I’ll probably knit another one myself… because this yarn combination is still calling my name.