The Evolution of a Design, Part 2

"In its knitted incarnation, the first yard or so draped nicely.  But it was somehow still too . . . hmmm, understated?  Not femme enough?  It still looked like something a guy would wear."

And then Lady Folderol wandered in.

Remember Lady Folderol, the yoke that morphs into a cascade of ruffles? 

She gave me trouble enough, that one, getting the ruffle right.  By the time I was sure of the numbers, I'd had to do yet another test knit.  This one was still on the needles, about three inches of it complete.

Lying next to Seaweed, she looked curiously refreshing, like foam on the wave's edge.  Frothy.  Girly.  So I ripped back to collar depth, added an anti-roll border of seed stitch, and bound off. 

Then it was, Where should she ride?  I tried all the usual tricks: Test it here, squint from a distance.  Try it there, walk in on it unawares.  You know the drill.

The scarf's edge seemed to work best, though then there was the obvious conundrum—all the way down an edge?  Both edges?  Well, I only had a collar's worth; might as well add that now, worry about more later, and adding it now as a collar, of course it had to be centered on an edge.  But that didn't look quite right.  Again, set it aside and ponder.  And then serendipity.

You see, when I set the scarf down this time, it fell into a fold occasioned by Seaweed's design.  A natural turn-back.  Which is as you see the finished item featured in yesterday's post.

Designs seldom spring full-blown.  Most of them emerge, evolve in baby steps:  hypothesis, test, revision, over and over.  Adding, redacting, building, ripping.

Until finally, if we're lucky, it feels just right.