Creating Patterns

The way my brain works often surprises me.  With my daughter moving, I took a friend to her (who doesn’t drive) and waited while this friend helped my daughter pack.  Since my daughter lives in an upstairs apartment, this meant I was stuck in my car for several hours.

I’m rarely bored because I always have stuff to do.  So I took some crocheting – two projects – and worked on them.  While working on one project, I came up with all these color options and ideas for working with this pattern.  In reality I wanted the yarn there right then to work on it.  Instead I’ll make note of it and try them out.

While working on these two projects, another came into my head.  When I create my patterns, I normally crochet and then write.  This way I’m not re-writing but writing it as I create it.  However, this time I didn’t have anything with me to be able to crochet this idea with.  I wrote a pattern – full on all rows.  I loved getting it down so I could try it later.

My middle daughter has a million skeins of yarn in my craft room she wants me to make up for her.  My intention was to find a skein or two and try out this pattern.  Instead my niece was out.  We were chatting and she said she had a need for specific headbands for summer.  I immediately thought of this new pattern I’d written.  I made her pick some yarn and bring it to me.

While we chatted, I worked on a headband for her.  By the time I was done, my pattern had been tested and revised.  She liked the headband I made her but wanted lighter weight for summer.  I had her go back to my craft room and pick out thread.

I’m not a huge fan of working with thread – it’s harder for me to see and harder on my hands.  However, this is a small pattern so I thought okay I’ll give it a try.  My niece thought I’d have to reduce the width of the pattern but in reality thread is much smaller than worsted weight yarn, so all I’ve had to do is reduce the size of my crochet hook and thread to use the same pattern to create a lighter weight headband for her.  I’m hoping she’ll like it.

While I came by this pattern in almost the opposite way I normally do things, I think the pattern turned out really nicely.  It isn’t difficult or too time consuming.  It works up nicely both in worsted weight and in thread.  I’ll be publishing it when I get the second project done.

This means I got a lot done while sitting in the car.  I worked on two projects, came up with ideas for other projects, and wrote a pattern.  Next, I want to get those ideas for the projects down and work on them.