I’ve made knitted items that I’ve “designed.” Or more accurately, I had a mental picture of what I wanted the end result to be, and made up the design as I went along. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
This weekend, I sat myself down, swatched some yarn that I wanted to make a vest for. Sketched out what I wanted the final design to look like. Put it on graph paper, worked out the decreases, and actually wrote out a pattern. All before casting on for the garment. I can’t find my color pencils or I’d color in the sketch to make sure it looks the way I want it to look.
Now, I just need to knit to gauge and see if it turns out the way I envisioned it.