Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Idea...or, why I'm just not like other people...

I've decided I'm just not hardwired like other people...

In my daily existence, I'm surrounded by people whose idea of a good time is yelling their lungs out at a sporting event, (whether this be pro-ball or little league, and whether this be in person or on their own sofa with a bag of Doritos), going to some far-flung part of the globe, but somehow losing their luggage in Albuquerque, or drinking themselves into a stupor and dancing the night away. Okay, I do get the dancing...this is probably the only “active” activity I share with my fellow people...I adore dancing.

However, no one around me, except for the select few who know but tolerate my oddness, appreciates my excitement over completing the Saturday crossword without peeking at the answers on-line. They don't get enjoyment of an entire afternoon reading a Dan Brown book, and getting sucked into Robert Langdon’s crazy existence of conspiracy theories and Pagan symbolism, while sitting in a lawn chair outside, listening to the animal life in the backyard. Between the squirrels, the chipmunks, the myriad species of birds, the deer, the wild turkeys, and the occasional bear, we have more wildlife than Animal Planet.

Most importantly, no one quite gets the excitement of puzzling out a pattern...

I have an idea for a sweater pattern. I want to make a yoke sweater, but—speaking of Langdon—I want to put Pagan symbols all along the yoke of the sweater and around the sleeves. I have searched on-line, I have asked the 200 kajillion knitters on Ravelry, I have asked sentient, in-the-flesh human beings, and no one has any idea where I can find exactly what I’m looking for. I knew it was going to be a crap shoot to find an actual sweater pattern like this, but I figured I could at least find some motif patterns to incorporate into a basic yoke. No dice. Anything I’ve found so far is entirely too large. I want small, subtle shapes that will make a large, beautiful final design.

On my way to the hairdresser the other day, it hit me...I’m going to have to create the pattern myself!

As I drove along, I began puzzling out in my head how I would approach this—what symbols to use, how to arrange them, how large should they be, etc. Do I want to go with one row of each design, or do I want the rows that are varied? Do I want this to be multi-colored, or do I want to do just black and white? Do I want this to be just the yoke, or do I want to do something different with the collar? Do I...?

In this frame of mind I walked into the hair salon.

“So,” my hairdresser cheerfully asks, “What have you been doing with your summer?”

You know telling her that I was in the process of designing a Pagan sweater wasn’t going to be Answer #1...

“Not much...”

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