Fantastic Workshop

I attended a 'Basic Design' workshop at Spin A Yarn in Devon yesterday. Our teacher was Clare Crompton (author of the Knitters Bible and other books). She is such a good teacher with a wealth of experience and knowledge to share.

I enjoyed the workshop a lot as I've not had a go at designing garments yet but would love to. We were taught how to design a basic drop shoulder sweater - taking measurements, working out tension and using our measurements and tension to size the garment and work out where increases/decreases etc had to go. Drew it all out on graph paper. Now there was lot of maths involvedand I hate maths and I'm no good at it either. But when you're talked through it slowly it's not a problem.

I've got books on design and they probably tell me all the same info we were taught yesterday but it's so mucheasier to understand when someone talks you through it.

We were also taught about placing a cable or lace panel on our designs. The sort oftings you need to take into account when incorporating various stitch patterns into our design and we also did some colour work which was very interesting. Working out yarn amounts and substituting yarn was also covered. And although the design we focused on was a basic drop shoulder sweater we were given ideas on other things we could do with that basic design.

This has given me lots of ideas and I can't wait to start getting some down on paper. When I design bags, accessories and socks I design while I knit and if it doesn't work out correctly then I frog it. That's how I work. I'm useless at drawing so drawing a freehand sketch of my designs first is a complete waste of time but with sweater design I've realised how essential it is.

I've got some Noro Blossom and some SWTC Pure Soy Silk which are all destined for a garment of some sort so now I can design my own.

Ultimately my ambition is to be able to design garments. I'm especially interested in designing for plus size ladies as I hate seeing beautiful designs and find they stop at size UK 14/16. That's one of the reasons I love the US knitting mags as they seem to incorporate larger sizes.

So a brilliant day but I was struggling with the pain. took painkillers and tried to hide the pain and headache. Was very tiredby the end of the day and had to drive half way home to collect my husband. Suffering a lot today too but have got a quiet day planned today. So far it's been a lot of sock knitting. Now I've got to get some patterns ready to be sent out and then Iwant to e-mail some of my stockists and potential stockists then it's back to my comfy chair and some knitting before walking the dog and popping to the postoffice after lunch.