For those who didn’t know I live in Canada and the rumours are true that in the winter it can get cold, scary cold. We’ve had quite a cold snap the last week with -30°C (-22°F) temperatures and that’s not including the wind chill factor which can make it like -40°C (-40°F). So working on a Spring themed pattern seems ironic to me.

The design for this pattern has been a struggle, it’s been a lot like when you have a great drawing idea in your head and you just can’t get it onto paper. The bee motif was exactly like this and although I’m happy with it the one in my head is still better. I knit many, many combinations for the bee trying to get the wings to show up without looking like huge holes. The second issue is the yarn in the image isn’t yarn I intended for this pattern. The yarn I have is a dark gray that is too dark to really show off the design. I’m in the process of knitting it in the gray anyway. Part of it is the wish that somehow the gray will still work, it’s part denial that it won’t work and to at least see how the weight of the yarn works for the pattern. Once I get past my denial stage I’m going to have to purchase the yarn in an off white or something light. I still haven’t revealed what I’m making – I’ll tell you later.

So since my last blog post my original idea for the pattern has shifted and this is a good thing. As I’ve heard before the only thing that never changes is change. Change is good. This is a creative endeavour and nothing is set in stone. It’s actually refreshing to just let things go and follow what feels good, feels right. I’m not giving too much away but, as you can see the pattern has to do with bees. My usual style would have been to create an intarsia bee but, I’m exploring an area of knitting I’m less familiar with – texture and lace. I’ve been struggling with creating a bee that I feel satisfied with. I was really excited when I found this honeybee lace pattern on knitting fool. However when I tried it out I found many problems with why it wouldn’t work for what I wanted. It didn’t fit row wise with the other pattern I want to use and it was too open. I found a few other stitches for bees but, none really fit. So I decided instead of trying to modify something I would just work from scratch. It’s taken a week of experimenting and a change of yarn colour so I see better but, I finally have a bee I like.