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Designing interests me and is fun. Most of my past efforts centred on designs for 24 stitch repeat knitting machine work but soon I will turn my attention to our Aran weight yarns and come up with patterns that can be supplied with them. (see also DHF Falklands)

Coming up with 24 stitch repeats might seem easy enough, but I tried  hard to balance what I did. I liked to alternate bands of traditional Fair Isle with Falkland motifs, and had about a dozen designs in my portfolio.  Of course the depth of tone varies with the type of motif or pattern, so I also liked to alternate lighter with darker, aiming for a balanced result.

Too often you see a lovely garment which has had much thought put into the stitch repeats used but none into the overall effect. Motifs get distorted at the side seams, or chopped off halfway through a band. With just a little more care and planning, this needn't happen. A lot of work and good yarn goes into most garments. Why not a bit of thought too.

If there aren't enough rows left to achieve another repeat, why not use a complementary pattern to add the last rows. Or move the whole thing down or up the garment. Lengthen the garment a tad, or shorten it. (Though you can avoid this by moving the pattern bands around.) There's always a way to solve any problem. Take a look at the sleeves in conjunction with the body of the garment, too. They need to look as though they belong.

Black Sheep Designs sweaters tended  to be simple shapes, just drop shoulder with crew necks. With an attractive pattern and lovely wool yarns, I saw no real need to go beyond simplicity in the shape. I preferred double i.e. mock rib welts, to complement the thicker fabric of our garments.

Simple straight waistcoats or 'vests' would also have suited our wool and designs but following a long spell in hospital I lost interest in machine knitting... 

Most of my designs used just two colours, but I also enjoyed adding a little Swiss darning or duplicate stitch to lift a plain design. My trout, for instance, looked good with a little extra colouring. And the Party Flock (sheep wandering a diddledee landscape) looked much nicer with scatterings of bright berries and greenery.

I used our own natural white and dark brown coned yarns for Black Sheep Designs sweaters, and Falkland Mill coned yarns for colour work. I planned on dyeing our own white wool in future for anything other than the natural coloured sweaters.

I've also dabbled in single-colour work - see the Black Sheep Showcase for a very complex white sweater I was asked to knit for Sarah Ferguson, as a wedding gift from the Islands on the occasion of her marriage. My brief for this unpaid task was simply to 'Make a sweater'  - helpful...   -  and the size indicated was on the tactful side to my mind, so I erred on the side of caution...

The garment I finally came up with had a sampler style front, alternating complex pattern with simpler squares, sixteen in total if I recall correctly with a hearts cable up through the centre of the front and a simple yoke design - and bands of textured pattern on the sleeves and back as I hadn't time to knit a squared back and squared sleeves could have driven me to drink... All stitches used related where possible to the occasion (e.g. Wedding Bells, Church Windows, Hearts etc). Altogether I used nearly 40 different stitch patterns, including one I invented on the spot, out of desperation. The welts were twisted rib. The photograph isn't very good - but will give you some idea at least.

When I had finished this daunting task, in plain natural white Falkland Mill D.K yarn, I breathed a huge sigh of relief, as I had been working to a tight deadline. Poor Clive had chopped the peat, milked the cow, cooked the meals, washed the dishes - all so I could concentrate on a fortnight's knitting. Just planning the garment had taken me a while as I wrote out the sampler front row by row to make sure I got it right. The bands were a little easier. When I made a mistake I simply pulled back the yarn and discarded it. No way was I going to wash this sweater and risk a blob of rusty water coming through the pipes to spoil it...

Then to my horror I discovered one tiny flaw in the herringbone panel, at the lower front edge. Only another knitter would spot this, I knew, but it wasn't good enough. Only the best would do for this special gift. And there was no time in which to re-knit it nor had I the heart to do it.

When I had stopped kicking the cat, tearing my head out, gnashing my teeth and wailing - I grabbed a large needle and length of yarn -
- and added an A&S monogram to the centre of this plain square, nicely disguising the mistake I had made.

"What a lovely touch!" cried everyone who saw the finished sweater.

"How clever!" they said, marvelling at my apparent ingenuity.

"However did you know that The wedding dress would also have this monogram????"

Hmmmm...

I suspect that the key to design success might be a mixture of hard work, a great deal of thought and much experimentation - combined with an occasional chunk of sheer luck...

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Updated 1st August 2006, left on site for interest only...