Here is a comment that a customer made to one of the shops that handles orders of my HeartStrings patterns.
“I’m glad to have this opportunity to tell you how pleased I was with the “personal touch” in the form of a hand-written note using my first name on the packing slip!! I also appreciate your offer to help if I have questions. Thank you very much for your prompt service. It was also nice to know that you, too, are in New Hampshire! Thank you for a great experience!!”
You can’t help but feel that the little extra touch (and time) this shop takes with their individual attention has paid off (and will continue to pay off) with loyal, satisfied customers.
I am so thankful to have shops like this providing such excellent service to customers who purchase my HeartStrings patterns. That leaves a good impression all around.
Have you ever thought about attaching your buttons directly onto a sweater button band as you knit/crochet, rather than sewing them on afterwards? I did that a number of years ago when making Medrith Glover’s Circumnavigated Cardigan. The unique construction of this sweater produces a totally seamless garment. Yay! no seams to sew. (Which I usually do try to avoid anyway unless there is a trade-off that warrants sewing as the lesser of two evils — also see To Seam or Not to Seam).
Pulling a loop of yarn through the button shank
As I neared the final steps of the sweater though, I realized that there would still be buttons to sew on. That got me thinking about making this project into a totally “new sew” one. My approach was to actually knit the buttons into the band. While knitting the band, when I reached a place where a button was to be attached, I just
pulled up a loop of yarn through the button shank,
placed that loop on the working needle, then
knitted the extra loop and next stitch together. Voila — button attached and no sewing to be done later.
Detail of button knitted directly into the button band
Some points —
This method is appropriate only for buttons with shanks.
To pull up the loop of yarn through the button shank, I used a small crochet hook (or you could use a small piece of bent wire).
I would only recommend this technique be used with a sturdy yarn and a relatively firmly knitted button band.
A similar approach could be used with a crocheted button band.
So that’s a little about attaching buttons to a sweater band while knitting or crocheting. Tuck it metaphorically into your knitting bag of tricks and it just might come in handy some day for a “when you’re done, you’re done” project.
The Winter 2011 TNNA Trade Show is just a few days away. This TNNA Show Preview (click the link) will help with your plans for covering the showroom floor so that you don’t miss what’s new and exciting for HeartStrings. The preview highlights the vendors who will be representing HeartStrings at the show and what they will have to entice you.
Long Beach Convention Center
Long Beach, California
January 8-10, 2011
I personally will not be at the show this time, but I do plan to myself be back in the action again at next June’s show. Here’s a photo of my exhibit booth at the last show. KyleAnn is my able assistant at the last several shows. She is a great knitter and designer in her own rights, and a good friend, too.
While my design process has become more streamlined with practice, seeing how other people manage the organization end of things can be helpful. In what order does a design develop for different people?
For me, the order in which a design goes from concept to completion is seldom a straight-line course. There is ebb and flow, and gradual refinement toward an inner vision — many steps (sometimes backwards), time, patience — in plain words, work.
The process started with a request from the yarn company, Colinton Angoras, to design a project with their lace weight Australian kid mohair yarn. We discussed their goals and parameters of such a project, e.g. scope and price point from the knitters point of view (i.e. small quick project vs. a larger showcase piece), difficulty level, additional materials needed such as beads, etc.
After receiving the project yarn, my next step would normally be to make a plain swatch to nail down the yarn’s behavior both during the knitting and the finishing/washing (e.g. range of knitting needle sizes, degree of blooming/halo after washing, etc.). However, I actually had already worked with this yarn several months prior when I made swatches for the TNNA Great Wall of Yarn. I’d made up both plain swatches (which I turned into bunnies for display at the yarn company booths) and patterned swatches (for display on the GWOY itself). This was a lucky break in saving some time now, as I’d kept good notes and photos (which is one of those discipline things that comes with practice, too).
First trial project swatch
The first trial project swatch was to get a feel for placement of beads and nupps, behavior of the biasing fabric (see those pretty swirly edges?), resulting gauge after blocking, and estimated yardage requirements for total project.
If you have not hear dabout nupps, they are sort of like bobbles but different. I have it on my list of to-do’s to make a video tutorial with tips for making nupps without tears. They really are a lot a fun once you get the hang of it.
Trial swatch for shaping
The next picture is the swatch I did for testing the side shaping for the eventual truncated triangle shape of the shawl/stole White Lotus Stole design. At this point, I was still undecided how to handle the interior eyelets of the Lotus blossoms, so if you look closely, you will see minor differences.
The final photo is the finished stole. Rather than just knitting a long rectangle, this stole is started at the bottom edge (blocked to about 30”), then increases to a blocked 72” at the top edge. My blocked length was 24”. Of course, you could add or subtract repeats to the pattern and knit longer or shorter based on your preferences and yarn/needle choices.
I just got word that LetsKnit2gether completed production of the video interview I did with them last summer.
In this episode of the LetsKnit2gether knitting web video series/podcast, Jackie E-S chats with CAT Susch about how she got started as an independent knitting designer and shows some examples of her latest designs exhibited at the TNNA Summer 2010 Show.
