Having had a surprisingly solid 2020, knitting-wise, I have a good idea of what I want to accomplish in my knitting and designing life this coming year.
A big thing that’s been weighing on my mind is…a sweater pattern! I have SO. MANY. sweater pattern ideas, but the fear of presenting something not perfectly tailored to all sizes of test knitter is keeping me from…just doing it. After all, I have pretty decent reference info for measurements besides my own, and I have a great tech editor! Later this month I’m looking forward to learning the custom spreadsheet method that Swanky Emu Knits uses, and I feel like with that technique in my bag of tricks I’ll really be able to stir things up.
Another thing I want to challenge myself is submitting a design to a publication. A few things have held me back here - first is designing to a prompt rather than working with something already in my imagination. Another is adapting the pattern to a specific format - I spent a lot of time working on my own templates, abbreviations, and stock language, so having to change all that to suit a different format feels like a lot of extra work. Finally, I worry about submitting an idea I can’t actually deliver on. At least this one is an easy fix: I just need to do a bit more design work before the submission so I know it’s doable! Hopefully in 2021 I can overcome the other 2 hurdles.
I’m hoping to get back to my Jane the Virgin-inspired socks this year. Early last year I developed one that needed to go back to the drawing board before release, and I got a big win when I revisited it over the winter holiday and found it pretty easy to update and improve! One thing I’m waffling on is whether it’s worth it to go back and update Xiomara - as much as I ADORE the look of that pattern, it’s like 1000% more complicated than it probably needs to be. That said, it’s technically doable as-is. This will probably be on my mind for a while before I finally decide.
I got a lot of great experience establishing my templates and processes in 2020, so I hope to keep polishing those in 2021. My absolute favorite technology of 2020 is Todoist, which has helped me keep track of everything from cleaning the litterbox on a regular schedule to remembering to hit the “start” button for my Ravelry discount codes so they don’t sit uselessly inactive during a pattern launch. (True story!)
Finally, I want to add regular blogging back into my schedule! It’s something I did a ton in high school and through my 20s, but I wasn’t doing knitting OR designing back then and as such had a lot more free time. I kinda tried to force it this year, with so-so success (?) but hopefully with the benefit of my uber-schedules I can do it a little more regularly.