I absolutely LOVE being a yarn pattern designer! Many of the reasons I love it, most people roll their eyes at. Of course I love the creativity, most people get that but what I most enjoy is the process. Ripping and redoing and most likely ripping again and again.
Another part of the process I enjoy is the math and all the numbers that go in to designing. One of the reasons I also enjoy tech editing.
I am going to share with you what a day in a yarn pattern designers life can look like. Many days we just along happily stitching and doing some writing but others look more like a particular I am going to share with you. A day during my time designing L.C.
It was basking in the sun of a beautiful Sunday, in late fall and I was making great progress, nearly finished, with the first front of my new shrug. Very exciting! But something just wasn’t right. This is where the creative process is hard for me. I prefer order, balance, symmetry and things like that; that wasn’t happening with the decreases I had chosen.
I have learned over the years not to rip in haste. More than once I didn’t like what I had, ripped and redid a few times just to end up back where I started. I went inside with my Ghana basket and grabbed the supplies needed to chart and make a couple of increase and decrease swatches.
With a cozy murder mystery playing on the table next to me, these two swatches below were born. They are only slightly different but I was so glad that I had worked out the stitches and could definitively see the difference, not just imagine it.
With the light beginning to wane I asked my hubby to come and snap a few photos for me so that I had some reference material for later.
I then looked everything over one last time, took a couple of flat-lay photos and ripped out like 85% of what I had done over the last 4 months.
I was only working on this project about 3-5 hours a week and there had already been a lot of ripping. Not huge sections like this, but still a lot of 3 steps forward and 2 steps back.
Now it was time to do this with more symmetry, balance and order. I was back to just 32 rows finished and no color changes, but I felt armed and ready for what was ahead. I had a new confidence in what I was doing and that made a huge difference in the project.
This pattern will be available for testing in late July of 2026, if you’re interested please sign up for my newsletter HERE and choose “Pattern Tester” when asked.
Happy Making!