Thought it’d be interesting to share a bit
of the creative process – and what comes along with it. So here goes a ramble.
Of sorts. Enjoy ;)
I’d been wanting to try and get my hands on
some Crazy Zauberballs for quite some time when the idea for Kingsroad popped
in my mind. So many colors, all wrapped in one –fairly cheap – ball, that was
very tempting to my tasteless, cheap self XD
Now, here’s the thing with me: as
disputable as my tastes can be (if you think we Frenchies are elegance
incarnate, think again) even I have my limits. And as much as I love that idea
of long color changing yarn, I often find garments knitted in these
un-wearable. I don’t know. They seem unnatural
to me, if that means anything. Kinda fake. Gadget-y. They can look good - as objects. Decorative things. Not practical
things. But that’s just me being weird. I’m aware. Don’t worry.
Anyway, back to creating Kingsroad. A while
ago, I have found out that the only way for me to safely use long color
changing yarn (i.e. make something I’ll actually wear) is to crochet it. Preferably
in stripes. With another long color
changing yarn – see the inconsistence of my reasoning there? One color changing
yarn, knitted: looks sketchy. Two or more, crocheted: totally fine. Because that makes sense.
And as if this wasn’t enough, when I was
purchasing Schoppel-Wolle goodness, I saw my usual yarn shop was selling
Kunstgarn – very colorful yarn, cheaper than the Zauberballs. So I got curious
about those, too. And decided to use FOUR different variegated yarns for my
crocheted stole – go big or go home, right?
The yarn arrived (No decent LYS where I
live. Gotta order almost everything.), an avalanche of colors grazed my
delicate eyes, and I got working.
And guess what?
The four colorways worked wonders together
– kinda surprising since I picked two different brands of yarn. Got those four
bad boys for a little less than 40 euros total – quite the bargain for so many
vibrant colors, if you ask me.
Yes, the result is freakishly gaudy – and
yes, I LOVE it. Again, it’s not as if I was known for my tame sense of style.
 |
| Exhibit A: Elegance incarnate, I tell you. |
Another good thing: both the Crazy
Zauberball and the Kunstgarn are what you’d call sock yarns - 75/25. So no
pilling. Which is always a plus.
The stole is soft enough – I wore it all
winter and didn’t find it scratchy. It is pretty heavy, though, but I quickly
got used to it. When you make a stole with 400g of yarn, you’ve got to be
realistic: the damned thing is gonna be heavy – 400 grams heavy, to be exact.
Anyway, I love my Kingsroad to bits. And
probably will try to come up with another crochet stole pattern someday soon,
just to have an excuse to use those yarns again.
But my little story doesn’t end here.
From the start, Kingsroad was meant to be a
pattern that I would sell. But it wasn’t meant to be customizable. I only
realized that it would be perfectly possible to write it as a customizable
pattern when I first started to chart the stripes.
And possible it was. Possible, but nightmarish to work out. Seriously. I
hadn’t expected the thing to be so difficult to write/chart. Make one little
modification to one tiny bit of
instruction, have the whole thing crumble down before your eyes, basically. Or
worse. Make on little modification to one tiny
bit of instruction, DON’T notice the whole thing crashing down before you, keep
working for hours, make fancy charts, formatting, proofread and THEN notice
something is not quite right. Yes. That happened. Quite a few times. But hey,
that was fun, all things considered. And educational. I mean, now I can proudly
say that I did it. I can boast and
say that I’m able to make a customizable pattern. AND I made my own set of
custom brushes for charting crochet patterns. I didn’t have the choice. It was
either do that, or go bonkers -oh, the
joy of having a terrible handwriting. Anyway, creating those brushes took
quite a lot of time, but now that they’re done, the whole charting process has
become much easier for me.
So I now have a gorgeous stole, a brand new
pattern, bragging rights and handy custom brushes. How nice is that? Very nice
indeed.
Although… as I write this, this pattern I’m
so proud of hasn’t been tested yet.
…dammit.
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