Your task today is to either think of or research a project that embodies that house/animal. It could be a knitting or crochet pattern – either of the animal itself or something that makes you think of the qualities of that house. Alternatively it could be a type or colour of yarn, or a single button. Whatever you choose, decide upon a project and blog about how and why it relates to your house/creature. You do not have to make this project! It is simply an exercise in blogging about how you come to decide upon what projects to make. Try and blog about the journey which inspiration and investigating patterns, yarns, stitches, (etc) can often guide you through. You may wish to make a collage or 'mood board' to present several ideas, or even sketch out your own design.
Before I start today I just want to make a comment about yesterday. I absolutely loved reading yesterday's posts and comments and was really encouraged to see so many people identify as bees. I think I felt like I was a lone 'flitter' unable to knuckle down and finished anything while every other knitter was managing to sit down to just one project and knit it til it was done. I feel better now!
So, on to todays exercise which was an interesting one that made me really think about how I approach my projects. Frankly, by the end I realised that it's a miracle that I ever settle on a project at all.
I have 2 usual starting points, either yarn or a specific garment type. This time I'm just going in with a keyword, BEE and seeing what I come up with. The process is very much the same although the starting point is different. As usual my only real resource is Ravelry, occasionally I'll flip through books for inspiration but most of them are on Ravelry anyway.
I begun my search by typing 'bee' into the pattern search. I got loads of results so I narrowed them down to clothing and because I immediately saw some really cute kids clothes I narrowed it down again to only include baby clothes. You can see my search here. Although I was really looking for a literal bee garment I spotted a few really cute things to save in my favourites for later, i.e this adorable little Twiggy dress. Whenever I'm deciding on a project my favourites list grows immensely, I do very often go back and remove quite a lot of things that it is clear I will never make. An immediate contender (could it really be that easy?) was Busy Bee a cute little bee hoodie, especially as I have been looking out for the perfect baby hoodie for quite some time now. Could this be the one? Maybe, but not for this project because I saw this Baby Jumper which set my mind thinking that a little bee dress would be super cute, perhaps with a fabric sunhat for the summer. It wouldn't be the first bee dress I've made either!
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| Slightly crap bee costume made out of t-shirts! |
Time for a new search then. This time I selected 'dress' from the main pattern page and went on to refine it from there. Again I selected baby as the size and this time I chose to only look at free patterns, simply to narrow down the number of resuklts I was getting. Again I ended up favouriting things unrelated to this project like this Lovely Easy Knitted and Material Dress but I also came across this Striped Bubble Dress which also seems like a contender for my bee dress. So now I have 2 in the running, how do I choose? Well because I am lazy I decide that I will knit the one which requires the thickest yarn, but then I realise that both are knit with 4-ply and around 3mm needles. Immediately I have gone off both dresses and go back to my search, this time selecting DK as the weight. I don't want anything any thicker because I don't really want a heavy winter dress. This time a lovely short sleeved dress called Apples catches my attention, knit with stripes instead of colourwork this would make a lovely bee dress. Perfect with leggings or tights and good for our Great British 'Summertime' where little sundresses often sit in the wardrobe waiting for a heatwave that never comes. Aaand there we have it, after a few twists and turns a project is born. Time to dive into the stash and find something suitable, I know there is no yellow in there at all but that's nothing a bit of food dye can't cure....
12 comments:
I think part of why so many of us identify as bees, and your post for today proves this as well, is because we've all been terribly spoiled by Ravelry and its vast database of possible new projects that keeps expanding even as we speak! I cannot do a simple search on Rav without adding at least 2 new patterns to my favourites! Glad to see that I'm not alone in this ;)
It was really cool to see just how many bees are out there ;)
I spend s much time looking at patterns of ravelry - then I fall down the rabbit hole of filters and searches and end up completely forgetting what I was looking for in the first place, but have about a hundred new things I want to make!
So true! If I set out to look for a hat pattern for me you can guarantee I'll end up casting on a cardigan for Cassie instead!
Aaaahhh now I want to knit Apples! So many great choices: you're definitely a great Bee example.
You're a bee! Ravelry really makes indecision easy:)
Your post explains so well the bee mentality. Sometimes I think if I spent all the time I spend on Ravelry knitting I might finish something. . . but it's so much fun :)
We flit and flutter about and we're spoiled by the vastness that is Ravelry. Then you throw in some other places and we're all in trouble :)
I like your approach. The dress you found is adorable, and I can definitely imagine it as a bee dress.
You have picked a really sweet pattern. I tend to pick my projects based on Ravelry searches too :)
That Ravelry database is something else. I love how easy it makes searching for a new project - and it's just so damn comprehensive!
Your searches cracked me up...you are pretty methodical about it...but distractable too....the little dress is so cute!!!!
It was fun going on this searching journey with you! I think that you ended up with a cute choice.
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