Designing again: after a 25 year break!

[inspiresuccess]

Once you create a blanket from squares, it would be good to take a picture to let your donators know what the end result looked like.

I love that idea! Everyone is so used to taking pictures with their phones. I just got my first smart phone. I've figured out how to take a photo but don't know how to make it into a picture that people could see. How do I print out a picture for people to see?

[Elaine Glimme]

We're about a half hour away from Concord. Christ the Lord Episcopal Church gives baby blankets, and newborn outfits to babies born at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center in Martinez every Mother's day. Knitters have been doing this for a long time, so some might be set into the patterns they've always used, but some might be interested in working with you.

Pinole Senior Center's gift shop has a ton of yarn on sale for about 50 cents per skein. These of course are left overs from projects.

[inspiresuccess]

Pinole Senior Center's gift shop has a ton of yarn on sale for about 50 cents per skein. These of course are left overs from projects.

Leftovers from projects are great for making small squares.

Square Peg, thanks for the suggestion about houses of worship. I live in an area where there are tons of churches everywhere.

Re: gift shop pricing. It reminds me that sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, Goodwill has yarn. I know because I donated mine there in addition to the senior center. I can call thrift stores to see if they sell yarn.

There's something call freecycle.org where people give stuff away. I could try there.

I know the way I would do this is very different from the average approach. I can't help approaching it like a professional designer. There were yarn projects shown in the window of our local library done by the senior knitters group. I know this sounds awful but I really cringed when I saw them -- absolutely atrocious!

The sad thing is, I could have easily taught them really simple tricks to make them look professional. That's what I'm hoping to do if I put this together. All I have to do is give them a little template, sample squares, and one easy direction -- if your work is getting smaller, knit looser; if it's getting larger, knit tighter. That's it. Simple. Easy. Direct from a professional designer. And the outcome will be uniform and beautiful.

If I stop by and collect the squares and take them home, I can arrange them really beautifully and stitch them together. I can take my time with the arrangement and enjoy the visual as I sew them together. Then I can leave the finished blanket for people to see, and then leave a photo of it when I send it off to the charity.

I know my approach might seem a bit controlling, but I think people would love to learn from a professional. It would help them with their other projects. What I described above about work getting bigger or smaller is the biggest challenge for every knitter -- it's called gauge. If your gauge is too loose, your baby hat can turn into a hat for a lumberjack. If your gauge is too tight, the Christmas sweater you're knitting for your husband is going to end up the right size for your toy poodle. Tension is critical; if they learn that one thing from me, everything else they knit will be the right size. A very cool thing to learn.

[Elaine Glimme]

[inspiresuccess]

Okay, I'm scratching the blanket project. As you may remember, 2 months ago I was so overwhelmed by a hat and scarf project that I still haven't had the courage to get back to it!

What I will do is:

Find a place to donate my blanket samples from the book
Make a list of knitting charities to list in the book for anyone, anywhere in the country who wants to donate their work.
Consider donating a percentage of whatever I earn from the book to a knitting charity.

That's much more doable for me. I have to get back to the hat and scarf project and finish it. I need to keep working on the book. Stay focused. I have trouble doing that. It's so much easier for me to come up with lots of ideas. So much harder to follow through.

[SquarePeg]

Sounds good!

[inspiresuccess]

I'm treating myself and having a blast. My experience with design has always been within the craft industry. When I learned to knit/crochet, I learned from craft magazines. Then I gave back by designing for these magazines (and craft books). My baby blanket book also follows in this tradition. It fits within the restraints of what beginners need.

I've always wanted to go wild and create one-of-kind art-type sweaters. I've started! I ordered 26 colors of small wool skeins to play with. And I'm doing sketches.

I love fashion magazines. I'm always tearing out pages of shoes, handbags,jewelry, clothing. Then the tear sheets pile up in boxes. I don't know what to do with them. Eventually, I have boxes and boxes that I throw out. THIS TIME...I know what to with them! I'm using them to make collages that I will use for inspiration for sweaters, paintings, and art quilts. I'm cutting them out and gluing them on poster board or putting them into 3 ring binders.

SO MUCH FUN!

I have a basic idea for my own sweater shapes. Underneath, I will wear a black turtleneck and black tights. The sweater will actually be an above the knee length tunic/vest. Worn with black boots, this will be my basic shape. Then I will experiment with the sweater/vests. I'm going to call them my shells. I'm adding embroidery and applique. I wish I could find some way to post my stuff online without using my real name so people could see what I'm describing. It's impossible to describe.

I dress fairly conservatively. My basic outfit is jeans with a blazer. I tend to blend into the background.

My new theme for making my own clothes and jewelry is COLORFUL. We'll see how I do. I'd have to get used to people looking at me a lot. My message to myself as far as being shy is, GET OVER IT!

[Elaine Glimme]

have fun.

[inspiresuccess]

Elaine and Square Peg,

Thank you for supporting me on this thread. I think I'm just going to continue writing all this stuff in my journal instead of sharing it here. With all the views of this thread you'd think that more than 2 people would respond, but no one else does.

I feel like I'm just talking to myself here. The point of writing here instead of in my journal is to share my journey with people. But if people are going to be silent observers, instead of sharing the journey with me, I don't think there's any point in continuing to post here. Barbara's books are all about people supporting each other, cheering each other on. Silence is not supportive. You can't cheer someone on by being silent.

For all the silent people out there, I wish you well. I hope you are pursuing your dreams and making them come true. I'm working on this dream of mine one step at a time.

Inspire Success

[reginamirus]

I'm coming very late to the party, but it really looks like that, save for a few precious people, this board is basically dead. Makes me wonder if it's just the holidays, or perhaps people have moved to a different platform somewhere else on the interwebs (?). I checked facebook and joined some BS groups, but my membership request is still pending after many days. Don't know what that's all about. Sad, really.

Any rate, I wish you all the best with your designing endeavors. You seem to have a good handle on what you want, and are taking steps to get there. Have a great holiday season.

[Elaine Glimme]

Reginamirus, The Boards are not dead, but there aren't a lot of people posting here. It's not just the holidays. I actually like the smaller group because I can keep up with it. I belong to some of the other Barbara Sher sites, but I end up deleting a lot of things without reading them because there's just too much.

There are others who read but don't post. But, yes, this is a smaller group. And maybe you'd be happier putting more effort into "Hanging Out" or "Scanners, Look what I'm about to do" And Scanners look what I just made. They're all great by the way. I hope you stay here but it's your choice. And if you do decide you want a larger group, feel free to back any time you want.

[reginamirus]

Oh! Ok, cool.

I was starting to think that I'd completely missed the party. I'm glad to hang out wherever, but it's not very fun when you feel like you're the only one talking and can hear an audible echo in the room. I can relate to that, and it sucks. I am in the FB "look what I made" group too, and have posted a bit over there. I want to help and participate, but looking at some of these categories here where the last message was posted in Jan 2016, or July 2013, I feel like commenting is an intrusion on some else's long finished conversation, ya know?

Perhaps I just haven't been here long enough to see how the culture here is. If I've offended, I do apologize.

[Elaine Glimme]

No you haven't offended anyone. If no one has posted on the thread for several months, it's probably outlived its purpose. Look for the threads where people have posted in the last few days.

By the way, I hope I can explain this well - when someone posts on a thread, that brings it up towards the top of the threads under the larger heading. (There are a few threads that are always at the top, then a line, then all the sub-topics or threads.

Sometimes, someone will "bump" a thread - bring it up to the forefront because it's a topic that the person feels is interesting and wants more people to comment on, even if it's old. Yes, if you post on a thread where the last date is 2015, it is exactly like being the only one talking in a very empty room.

I always thought it would be a good idea to clean out some of the old threads, but every once in a while, someone will want to see something that was written in 2009.

[Elaine Glimme]

p.s. Thanks for asking the questions.

Also, while we try to stay on the topic of the thread, a little bit of rambling is accepted and encouraged. i.e. Don't worry about "Oh, my, did I post correctly? Will everyone hate me for writing about strawberries on the Blueberry thread?" (My sense of humor here.)

Don't post anything offensive. The boards are not private. Don't post anything that you don't want strangers to know about. Anything else is okay.

I hope some of this helps.

[Elaine Glimme]

Inspiresuccess, Have fun with the colors. ( I'm a nut for anything blue.)