This was the proposal I sent for my most recent pattern, Blue Skies & Butterflies, which appears in Sweet Paprika Yarns’ Kith & Kin Collection. Eight -8! sizes, from baby to extra-large adult.
I love love love making gloves, all kinds of gloves, any size, any shape. It’s instinctive: I’m pretty sure there’s some funky topological calculus tattooed into my brain that fills out the details – I’ll never not be able to make them.
I’m generally happy with my romance section: I think I call up a mood pretty well. The inspiration is clear, too. Escher is a favourite of mine, a perfect blending of art, mathematics and vision science, my specialism. I’m not happy with the photo, but with the theft of my beloved old Pentax and poor results from a borrowed DSLR, I decided to scan the swatch. It’s not wonderful – better than the DLSR – but I suppose it gets the message across.
The sketch is, however, laughable. Part of me questions the need for a sketch in some instances where shape is obvious: the brief was for a mitten, FHS. How many options are there? But, the process must be followed. In this case, I did a quick sketch on my tablet, using a sketching app and a finer-than-usual touchscreen stylus. Nowhere near my usual standard for sketching, but I needed to test the tech, and could not be bothered to go through my usual sketch, scan, titivate and save in a suitable format. I’ll probably stroke out one day on the titivating part alone. Give me a pencil over Creative Suite anyday.
Nevertheless, the proposal did the job. My tablet technique has improved dramatically since – but more on that later. Shh!
thornmaiden.com 