Backing into a sweater design part III

OK I hate it. I really, really hate it. It doesn't look anything like my beautiful picture because the picture has too much detail for the resolution that I can get with DK weight yarn. The color combinations that looked so great on the table didn't work anywhere near as well with the constant color changes. I just hate it. I was about to tear it all out when a friend came over with her 18 year old and the kid went nuts over it so maybe it isn't as awful as I think if you didn't know what it was supposed to look like in the first place. My husband likes it.

I usually work tapestry crochet pieces in the round because then I'm always on the right side and can hide a lot of colors without worrying that they'll show through on the wrong side that no one will see anyway. I can't do that with other shapes. I use tiny hooks and lace weight yarn to get these sorts of detailed results:





































When I use hooks and thread that tiny I can get at least 20 stitches into a square inch. Using DK weight I'm lucky to get 8 so trying to work a picture as detailed as the one that I just did is inevitably going to look like something set at much too low a resolution. Oh well, live and learn.

So what's next? Last night I designed a much, much simpler design with larger blocks of color and no tiny details that will get smushed together as a blob. Today I'll work that up and then decide whether the two different ones will look OK on the same sweater and if so then I'll work on some unifying design that can go around the neck and shoulders to tie them together. If I still really hate it I'll rip the complicated side out. I hate it less every time that I look at it as the memory of what I wanted to make fades and I have to remind myself that just because it isn't my taste doesn't mean that someone else won't like it.

This might all sound torturous and wasteful to someone else but if I knew exactly what I wanted to do and then did it by rote I would be bored out of my mind in no time at all.


Please come see my handmade designer plus size sweaters, sweater coats, capes and shrugs at MirabilisFashions.com