From Concept to Kit

Where do those ideas come from?

I guess I spend a lot of time online window shopping (I’m trying hard to shop more sustainably so I still go onto the Asos and Zara websites – just to torture myself it seems, as I’m ‘not allowed’ to buy anything from them) I like to see what’s in the shops; colours, shapes, styles etc but I don’t really like to follow trends, I certainly don’t think our ranges are trend led and nor should they be. Knitting is SO sustainable and there’s a timeless magic to it, I’d hate to ruin that by creating products that would only be ‘in style’ for a month and then banished to the back of the wardrobe. But it is always interesting to get a feel for new styles and try to get inspiration from the clothes we love.

I also spend a lot of time on Pinterest. I have a secret board devoted to knit kit ideas – I keep it secret because we’ve had so many Janet Moments. I love to share things but it kills me when they’re copied so anything that’s on the back burner I try to keep under wraps. On that note – it’s important to mention that when I’m looking for inspiration, I’m not looking for clothes I can replicate, I’m looking for shape ideas, necklines I like, interesting trims…elements I can bring into my work in my own way. And sometimes inspiration comes from somewhere totally random…The Pompom jumper, for example was a result of having loads of little pompom makers spare. We buy them in packs of two (a small and a mini) and we use the small pompom makers in our Pompom kits but had a loads of Mini makers left over. We weren’t sure what to do with them so were trying to come up with ideas when I thought it would be good to use them in a kit, I love making beginners kits that might entice people to knitting and I adore making jumpers (probably because I love wearing them so much) so it all kind of added together to create my favourite kit ever…just because we wanted to get rid of some spare pompom makers.

What Happens Next?

So once I come up with a concept it’s time to bring it to life. I’m finding that the more kits I’ve developed, the easier this becomes. As the catalogue of patterns grows, it’s easier to understand things like sizing – something that I must admit, alluded me to begin with – gauge, length and stitches, not to mention how much easier it is to format a pattern once you have a template (something that I learnt from writing my knitting book)

Bringing a concept to life now mainly involves trying on the rest of my kit products, figuring out which elements I want to keep the same and what I want to change. I also consider whether I want it to be a beginners, intermediate or advanced kit (this can change during the process as it develops but generally I try to set the level at the beginning and work to the techniques within it.) Sometimes I sketch out my ideas – I’m certainly no artist so they’re SUPER basic just to give me some clarity.

Time to start knitting…

Once I’ve planned out what I’m going to knit I need to start knitting. As I mentioned, this becomes easier with every kit as I now have a really clear starting point for sizing. For instance, for the pompom jumper, I looked at my favourite kit at the time…The Button (Kn)it up Cardigan. I love the fit of this cardigan so I tried it on backwards to try and imagine what it would look like as a jumper, I decided how much narrower I wanted the jumper and whilst I was wearing it backwards -I thought it looked really cute with the V neck (front of the cardigan) at the back and decided to add a V-neck on one side of the jumper.

Button (Kn)it Up Cardigan on Backwards (It’s kind of a LEWK)

Once I start knitting I basically make a million notes. I wish I could say I have an organised system for this but it’s quite honestly a total mess. I make notes all over the bloody place. Sometimes on my phone (that’s normally when I’m being really lazy) in a notebook if I have one to hand, or on my laptop if I can bear to stand up and walk to it. Laptop notes are my favourite because then when I type it up properly it’s all there already (and lets not mention the fact that my phone notes don’t sync with my MacBook…technology isn’t my friend)

I tend to make the first one to fit me so it’s normally a ‘small’ size and then I work up from there – I like to see it on, make sure it makes sense on a body before I then translate it to other sizes. When I first started kits, as I said – I didn’t really have a clue about sizing and so our sizing still isn’t perfect but I try to make kits from UK size 6 to UK size 24 (If you ever want bigger or smaller kits let me know!! we want our ranges to be as inclusive as possible)

Next up is the boring bit which involves ALL the maths. This is the part where I often want to give up on the kit because I’m NAT a maths person. It involves a lot of gauge checking and the calculator app on my phone earns it’s keep here. Once that bits all out the way I should then have a pattern in multiple sizes which means it’s time for pattern testing…

Pompom Jumper before it’s stitched up

Pattern Testing

The amount of testing required really depends on the pattern itself. Sometimes I end up knitting a few sizes myself and if it’s really simple pattern I feel confident it only needs a bit more testing, others I like to get tested a number of times and to cover every size. All of our patterns get made at least 3 times before they’re released to make sure they a) make sense and b) are correct. I find pattern testers in my Facebook Group – it’s exclusively for our LAD Pattern and knit kit customers and I tend to ask if people are up for it and then select the members who are most active in the group as a way of saying thank you.

This is the stage where I tend to iron out any issues, sometimes I make big changes here but mainly it’s just tweaks to the pattern and checking how much yarn everyone used. We really focus on the yarn consumption here too as it obviously impacts the kits a lot. Because everyone’s knitting is slightly different and there will always be slight differences in the yarn we can get a lot of fluctuation in the yarn consumption. This complicated things when it comes to the knit kits. If I use 590g of yarn but the pattern testers use 610g for the same pattern, in the same size – we have to put an extra hank of yarn in just to make sure. Of course sometimes we’ll all test it and come out under 500g and then a customer will knit it and run out of 600g of yarn, before they finish – that’s just knitting, but we do our best to make sure 98% of customers will have enough yarn, whilst also trying not to put way too much in that most people wont need, as that it’ll push the price up unnecessary. Consumption is something I really try to take into account whilst knitting the original sample for this reason.

Colours

It’s somewhere around here that I choose the colour I want for the cover of the pattern. This is always AGONISING – it feels like a hard decision at the best of times but when it’s the cover image there’s an added pressure because it needs to be the image the SELLS the product. Most people will buy the colour they see (which is why Mink Blush is our best selling colour since it was used on the cover of the Dreamy Oversized Cardigan pattern which is our most popular knit kit) For this reason I tend to go a bit ‘safe’ most of the time and then I often test the pattern again in another size by knitting it in a colour I love.