In Appreciation of Designers

I wonder sometimes how the professional designers do it. I've read some of their blogs and listened to some of their podcasts and I still don't really get it. How do they come up with something new and make it work? Since I "design" only for myself and things I want to wear, I suppose the process is different, but I'm still curious. My "process" goes something like this: 1)see something in a magazine, on a tv show, or in a dream that I like; 2)get a picture in my head of what it would look like on me; 3)modify the picture in my head until the item looks good on me (sometimes the process comes to a shrieking halt right here, since I am never going to look good in the tight-under-the-bust, deep-decolletage, short-puffy-sleeve articles so popular right now); then try to figure out how to make it. Though I am usually a "project", not a "process" kind of knitter, when I'm trying to come up with a pattern I can focus on the techniques to get me where I want to go. I don't mind frogging something that doesn't work and trying again until it does (however, I once read where Meg Swansen knitted the sleeve for a sweater she was designing seven times before she got what she wanted. I'm not that focused! BTW, the photo is one of Meg's designs.) My only problem seems to be that I don't anticipate finishings as well as I should; the facings and buttonbands, hems vs ribbing, and so on. It might help, I suppose, if I could sketch the design before I try to knit it, but I have no ability whatsoever to draw to scale or with perspective. I can see it in my head but can't put it on paper.

So when I see great knitwear designs I stand in awe. The brains of designers must just be bigger than mine. Or their gene makeup is different.

My mother had the crafty gene; I'm sure that's where I got it. She had trained as a seamstress, and made us wonderful matching outfits every Easter for years and years. I didn't realize it until after her passing, but she tatted and sewed and crocheted and did macrame and was a pretty decent cook. She didn't knit, though; I had to learn that on my own. But she had a way of looking at complicated techniques in sewing and making them seem easy. I bet if she had wanted to design knitwear she would have been another Elizabeth Zimmerman type. If only she had passed that ability on to me.

In my next life I want to be Connie Chang Chinchio or Norah Gaughan. Or Meg! It's probably sacrilege to want to be EZ, isn't it? One can only hope......