I am a voracious crafter who has been knitting on and off since I was five when my mom got tired of me taking her knitting projects and making a mess of them. She gave me my first pair of needles and a ball of Red Heart yarn and sent me out to the backyard to do my own thing.  Since then I have followed her into needlepoint, crewel embroidery, sewing, quilting, cake decorating and started cross stitch projects on my own. I have cross stitched a bed coverlet (not a great idea, since anything that sits on it pulls the stitches) and branched out into counted cross stitch.  It is an embarrassment of riches when I look at the projects I can start and finish. Of course there are the unfinished projects that need attention, but now that I am retired I will get to them.

Since I have been knitting on and off for over 60 years, I was looking for a new knitting challenge that took my interest. Designing is it!  I took a class at Vogue Knitting Live in January 2024 that gave me the opportunity to see where I could get pattern inspiration from.  I use coded phrases embedded into the pattern to give me the start of a lace pattern. That pattern gets reversed and flipped until a swatch of the stitches looks good to me.  Next comes a lace cowl from that pattern and then I look to see if there is a cable pattern that is apparent to me from the lace pattern. A cable cowl follows soon after. A coordinating hat for the cable cowl often is the next pattern.  I see branching out into hooded cowls, as well as socks, sweaters and occasionally, dresses.  There are one or two dresses that want to be designed and I have to get through the process of writing the patterns.  

Writing the patterns is not as intuitive as it might be for others as I am dyslexic, but what the heck. I have time and a great tech editor who has the patience of a saint as well as a daughter who co-hosts our podcast and along with her partner and her friends help me with some of the technical issues.  I have patterns in my head battling to be created and they are only limited by my tech talent and slightly off kilter logic.  With a lot of help from my friends - team, these patterns are being created.  Thank you for finding Knitting In Our Genes.