{"id":615,"date":"2015-12-17T14:36:52","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T14:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/knittedinswitzerland.wordpress.com\/?p=615"},"modified":"2018-05-22T15:52:30","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T15:52:30","slug":"designer-interview-robynn-weldon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/knittedinswitzerland.ch\/?p=615","title":{"rendered":"Designer Interview: Robynn Weldon"},"content":{"rendered":"
Today’s designer interview is with Robynn Weldon. No matter if you’re looking for cute and practical things for children or for adults – you’ll find something in her Ravelry shop<\/a>! Shown below is her Elfbaby Hat.<\/div>\n
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\"LL_pixi\"<\/div>\n
(c) Lorna Lynch<\/div>\n
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1. How did you come to knitting \/ crocheting?<\/div>\n
My whole family are into needlecrafts, so it feels inevitable that I joined them. I picked up basic knitting and crochet skills as a small child, but it was in my teens, in boarding school, that I really got hooked. Boarding school was <\/span>really<\/i>\u00a0boring and it took me a while to make friends; I loved being able to sink deep into my own creative projects and ignore everyone else. (Probably didn\u2019t really help on the making friends front. Oops.) <\/span><\/div>\n
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2. How did you come to designing?<\/div>\n
In my family, designing (or improvising) was just part of the craft. Nobody ever followed a pattern. So I always designed my own projects; and for a long time I dreamed of sharing patterns for them. But I was scared of submitting to the magazines, and I kept putting things off. Eventually I had my first pattern \u2013 the cabled cardigan Twist & Shout \u2013 published in Knitty, which was hugely exciting, but right after that I had my first baby. And she turned out to be really<\/i>\u00a0demanding. So I didn\u2019t make much headway with my design ambitions for a few years after that. I still struggle to carve out designing time and brain capacity from my childcare responsibilities, but with a 6yo and an almost 3yo, it\u2019s finally getting easier.<\/span><\/div>\n
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3. What inspires your designs?<\/div>\n
I have a folder full of\u00a0\u201cinspired\u201d ideas, prompted by maybe a fashion silhouette, or a textural idea from tree bark, but honestly, the things I actually make<\/i> are usually motivated, more than inspired. They solve a problem, be it\u00a0\u201cwhat can I do with this yarn?\u201d or\u00a0\u201chow can I keep my toddler\u2019s neck warm?\u201d. I think in my head I\u2019m a very different kind of designer to the one shown in my actual portfolio, because I think of my design sensibilities in terms of all those creative ideas, not the patterns I\u2019ve actually made real so far! <\/span><\/div>\n
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4. What is your design process?<\/div>\n

It starts in one of two quite different places. Either I decide to make X item in Y yarn, and I spent some quality time swatching different stitch patterns to determine the look of the thing \u2013 this was, for instance, the process behind Am Meer \u2013 before plotting the whole thing out and finally knitting it. Or I get tickled by a particular concept: a construction trick, say, or a stitch idea \u2013 like Wiggly Warmers\u2019 keyhole cables, or\u00a0the reversible lace I designed for the Konstanz scarf \u2013 and I work the whole thing out in my head before trying it out, and quite possibly finding that it doesn\u2019t work at\u00a0all<\/i>\u00a0the way I want. Then I tinker until it does (or until I hate myself). Either way, I try to write (or at least grade) the full pattern before I knit it up, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve quite achieved that yet. At some point the knitting overtakes the writing. But I\u2019m improving. These days there\u2019s a lot more planning, and better notes, than when I started.<\/span><\/p>\n

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