One of the many things I like about my knitting enterprise (the design work, website, and blog) is how its "branding" evolves. Over the past 3 years I've changed my website format a few times, which has spawned like changes to my business cards, the pattern font and layout, etc., and each time I'm tempted to go back and change all of my prior patterns (38 published at this writing) to match the new look – but I resist. (Truthfully it's an ongoing internal dialog. I can be that kind of perfectionist.) Such would be crazy work, I tell myself, and would get in the way of my knitting.
The latest in this evolution involves the naming of my designs. Up until now I've used my family tree as source, beginning with my mum – Marlene. By now I'm running out of family names, and since I expect to never stop this work :), I need another plan.
I read recently a blog post by knitwear designer Bristol Ivy (Where the Red-Winged Blackbird Flies) where she recites a Shaker spiritual, "by turning, turning, we come 'round right." She's a wonderful writer and I found this passage particularly poetic. I've thought of it a lot since and as often happens, I notice, when timing is right ideas come together. From this I've decided to name my pieces lyrically while keeping their basis in my history and family story. It feels right, and consistent, hopefully opening up a whole world of naming possibilities – though currently I'm thinking only of the next.
Oh Johnny Lee – mum's first crush, as written in her teenage diary that I found and secretly read as a scoundrel child, then broadcast to the family, as we laughed and laughed. Mum laughed too, though I never saw that diary again. I don't think she'd mind me using the memory.
Launch of Oh Johnny Lee forthcoming.