You’ve heard me mention my neighbour who is new to crochet, I call her Neighbour Jenny, not Jenny from the Block or Crochet Jenny to which I’m often referred. She loves my designs but she doesn’t love my patterns. But I still like her.
What she does love is Lyndall’s pattern writing. My dear friend Lyndall gave her a simple sheet with instructions, no photos, and “neighbour Jenny” has made blanket after blanket using this stitch. She Loves it! I call it the Lyndall’s stitch. The stitch may have been around for a while, but not the way Lyndall has written it. Neighbour Jenny asked me why can’t I write patterns like Lyndall. It got to thinking ………………. This is me thinking.
I had and epiphany this morning when looking at the amazing Wool and the Gang and looked at their instructions. They are not in a traditional format and I liked it, really, really liked it. Coincidently their yarns have just recently appeared in Murwillumbah, of all places, and this is also where Lyndall lives. Coincidence, there is no such thing as a coincidence I’ve been told. So really this seems to be all about Lyndall, and it is. Lyndall is a teacher, but she was a student first and when she teaches she notices better than me where students may need extra help. So she offers advice about stitch markers and such to ease their pain. When I looked at Wool and the gang’s pattern and was as if Lyndall had been there to make it easier to read.
This makes sense if I tell you that I really dislike writing patterns and I really dislike reading patterns but I love, love, love to teach. I realised that I don’t say in my patterns what I say when I’m teaching, that is the epiphany part. I have always written my patterns in a traditional way. I have been published internationally and I format my patterns the way that is traditionally recognised for each particular publisher. I did do it my way at the beginning, back in 1998. I had commas everywhere, and Jenny isms but as soon as you are paying for the printing the writing gets smaller and it all gets condensed.
Now I want to go back to the drawing board and I will take a leaf out of both Lyndall’s and Wool and the Gang’s book and try writing my instructions in steps explaining how I would if I was teaching you in class. And we are working on simple videos to help. We being my new film crew( my husband whose previous work was seen in “Shawlsational the video”) They won’t be high tech at all but hopefully they will be more like me in class.
I’m all buoyed up after receiving my class evaluations from Crochet Guild of America in July and I’m floating on a cloud, floating because my head is swollen perhaps. Thank you to those students who spoke their minds.
I’m going to see if I can use what I know to share my love of crochet taking everything Neighbour Jenny says on board and rethinking my instructions .Watch this space!!!