An Original Design?

“Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d” is the title of the book that I am reading.  It has nothing to do with knitting but I mention it because it is a quote from Macbeth.  The author has used this line from Shakespeare, and Shakespeare himself was inspired by other writers and story tellers.  This week I have been thinking about what makes an original design – and the answer is not an easy one.  In fact I am not sure that there is such a thing as a completely original design because although you might think it is new – you may have seen something like it somewhere without remembering.

It is easier to say what is not acceptable.  It is not acceptable to take a published pattern and claim it as your own.  There is a grey area though.  I have often intended to knit a published pattern – but I have decided that I want to use a different yarn, and then I decide to use much larger needles – and then I decide to do a different stitch – the finished item could end up nothing like the design that inspired it.  I am still working on my variation of the 10 stitch blanket.  It is almost finished and I will publish photos of it but I don’t think I will write down what I have done because I have really just used the central section of the 10 stitch blanket and repeated it 20 times.  I don’t think I can say it is my design although I have not consciously seen it before.

Yesterday I went to Oxford for the Knitting and Crochet Guild meeting.  I was supposed to be leading a session on Creative Knitting, but I know that most people are not very interested in that as a topic.  Also it is hard to be creative at 2.30 on a Saturday afternoon – ideas come at odd times.  I therefore decided to use the session to tackle a project that had been suggested to me.  This comes back to the question of “what is an original design?”.  Someone has produced a representation of a bookcase made from patchwork fabric and embroidery.  It was suggested that we could knit something similar to hang in local libraries.  The patchwork was a quilt but we decided to make some panels instead rather than one large item.

I have come up with one design by knitting individual strips representing  the spines of books.

Most of them are inspired by actual book spines (and therefore – of course - are not original!)  I have never consciously seen them knitted before so I hope the knitting pattern is original although the idea is not! 

I hope to finish off the panel I am doing in the next month or so.  I should say week or so, but I want to work on some other projects that I have started and not finished – such as the 10 stitch blanket variation and a shawl that I started as a portable project.  I am also fighting the urge to start knitting a lovely Brian Smith shawl that is the latest edition of Knitting magazine.