Life Love Gloves

I’ve finally got some picture of the non-web related projects from the past month or so. After a crazy summer of general insanity, dissertation, parental visit, and most recently, flat hunting, I think things are settling down enough to start updating regularly again! I have a lot of projects in the works with the webs, but here are the recent other projects, one of which you can see in the banner of this blog!

I needed a banner for the blog, my etsy shop (which hasn’t been updated in about 500 years), and the idea of artist business cards eventually (read: when I get my you-know-what in gear). Lovely Lenny helped me to photoshop the pictures into submission as I still haven’t learned to use it. (Thanks!)

Here is the only surviving picture of this one.

I redesigned it (although with complete disregard for what size it needs to be for the blog banner, which is why the current picture is a bit wonky.) and used my favorite wool- Jamieson and Smith Jumper weight, in specially chosen colours (as opposed to whatever I found in my stash).

The other project is these gloves that I’ve had in mind for a long time (especially since I lost my Endpaper Mitts in NYC). It has one of my favorite phrases written on the wrists, like those ubiquitous tattoos. Love All Always. And a pattern in red, yellow, and grey that I’m quite proud of. I meant it to be a checkered pattern, but messed it up when I was designing it and like it better than checks!

The scary part about design:

is pretty much everything!

I’m mostly concerned that I can’t see what’s wrong with a design. It’s that particular situation when you finish something and think it’s worthy of a Nobel prize and then you look at it a few hours later and want to burn it!

This corresponds to both graphic design and knit design. I’ve ordered some knitting design books, so I hope that will help. Apparently Elizabeth Zimmerman is a wool goddess! I’m very excited and they should arrive tomorrow. (I’ll keep you posted lovely people!)

Graphic design is my worst nightmare come true. I’m pretty terrible at design, and have a hard time recognizing ‘perfect’ design from a work in progress in the most talented of crafters See Mummysam who despite her hair-pulling frustration with this piece, is an incredible designer and a bit of an inspiration since Life on the Double Point pointed (ahem) her out to me a few months ago.

I’ve also had endless frustration designing banners for blogs, my website, and Etsy, which came to a head when another shop not-entirely-kindly pointed out that my banner and theirs were ‘the same’, it doesn’t help that they use the name handmadehandsome! (I think it’s actually a rather funny coincidence, especially considering they knit too and was planning on changing my shop name to reflect the name of the knit design business that I want to start.)

It’s another incredibly frustrating side-affect of choosing not to study art in university. (I fear this decision will haunt me forever.)

Where do you start with design? What are some good pointers? any recommended reading for design-idiots like me?