process
inspiration
I take a lot of inspiration from well,.. my other areas of interest. Being Filipino, I wish to draw on the richness of my home culture, and so I choose to highlight some aspect of it in my designs. Being Filipino is not the only thing that defines me though—I am above all, human and by not confined to any one perspective and purview. I have a background in English and Creative Writing (see my full bio) and I love to draw from literature to inspire my knit designs. I also am an enthusiastic (if not always precise!) cook and I thing knitting and comfort food are great companions! I also love being out in nature—taking walks, hiking, camping. Lately, my outdoor jaunts have increasingly been inspired by an energetic toddler (boy, is he a fast runner!). Whenever I get an idea for a knit design, it's usually when out and about, doing other things I love,
actualization
Like many things that involve the work of hands, designing knitwear (at least for me), is a highly rewarding process. It is a process though, I'm learning, that is slow and fraught with reworks (read: a lot of frogging!). The end result is always extremely satisfying though! I start with a mood board—collecting images and snippets of things I'm reading to give me ideas about how I want the finished object to appear. I then spend a lot of time scouring stitch dictionaries for the perfect stitch combinations, or just fiddling around with scrap yarn and needles, trying out random techniques in the hopes of finding a happy accident. When I've settled on my stitches, I start sketching out a rough approximation of how I want my piece to look. From there it's swatching and spreadsheets (stitch counts and math!).