The history of Knit Darling goes back pretty far. I designed around 100 patterns over a ten-year period, then things kind of fizzled out when I became pregnant with my first son, Arlo. Now I find myself at an inflection point, so I've been looking back at all this work and thinking about my path and what it all means.

The timeline goes roughly like this, if you're curious:

• 2009 — Published my first free pattern, the Op Top
• 2010 — Started the blog; self-published a dozen patterns in one year
• 2011 — Began designing for yarn brands and magazines; first collection published in Knitscene magazine
• 2012 — Got a book deal with Interweave Press
• 2013 — Published my second collection, Winsome Knits, with KnitPicks
• 2014 — Graphic Knits was released with 20 patterns; national book tour
• 2015 — Got the cover design on the Fall issue of Interweave Knits
• 2016 — Third major collection, Speckle and Stone, published
• 2017 — Fourth major collection, Homage, self-published
• 2018 — Keynote speaker at the Zombie Knitpocalypse; designed for various yarn companies; UX design school
• 2019 to present — Started Twill Creative, had a kid, co-founded BrandAction.org, IVF, had a second kid…and averaged only one pattern published each year for seven years.

Reading that last line, this is not really how I imagined the trajectory of my knitting pattern design career going. Probably if you had asked me in 2012, the ink still fresh on my book deal contract, I would have said that ten years forward, my life would be completely centered on knitwear design and I would be a household name (among knitters). But that's not really the case.

But looking back at all of this now, the thing that strikes me most isn't where the trajectory changed. It's the work itself.

I made more than 100 patterns!

When I look at them all together, I see a cohesive body of work that didn't feel cohesive at all while I was making it. Apparently I had a specific aesthetic all along. Maybe I knew that on some level, but the more work I made, the more it all became unmistakably “me." Looking back now, I can see it.

There are surprisingly few patterns that make me cringe. When they do, it's mostly because I can see exactly what I would do differently today.

My very first free pattern, the Op Top, went absolutely viral. There are so many Op Tops out there, that I once spotted one in the wild on the streets of New York City. At the time, this was thrilling. Today I look at the colorwork shaping at the crown and think, Oh honey. I really did not know what I was doing yet.

Then there are the patterns that make no sense to me from the opposite direction. The Shilah Cardigan should have been a hit! It is still one of my favorite sweaters. I've worn it probably twenty times a year for years, the pattern is well written, and I think the design still looks stylish. Number of projects on Ravelry: two. And one belongs to my mother.

You just never know.

I also remember what it felt like to publish patterns in those early days, before Ravelry was so saturated. It was absolutely electric. I originally released the Delancey Cardigan for $1.99 (ha!) and sold hundreds of copies on opening day. What a day! That pattern stayed popular for many years. Looking at it now, the silhouette is so 2010, but the construction is still really interesting. Around its tenth anniversary I had an idea to make a “Fancy Delancey" mini-collection of spin-offs using the same novel construction method. I was too busy, and the moment passed.

Maybe I'll come back to that one someday. Who knows?

More than any of that, though, looking through these patterns brings back memories of what was happening in my life while I was knitting each sample.

I remember knitting on a red-eye to Ireland instead of sleeping. I remember all those knit nights with the Cobble Hill crew. I remember the business trip where I accidentally left a piece of the cardigan I was knitting in my hotel room. I remember casting on the hem of the Liwi top, looking down at my needles, and realizing that for the third time in a row I had somehow cast on exactly the right number of stitches without counting. A new skill! Isn't the subconscious mind amazing?!

And I remember seeing the finished photography for Graphic Knits for the first time. That was a big one. I'd spent years feeling like I was somehow pretending to be a knitwear designer, and suddenly I was looking at this beautiful, professionally photographed collection of twenty designs that I had made.

Imposter no more!

Looking back, the arc probably hits its peak with my book deal with Interweave. That was a point in my life where I had completely saturated myself, if that makes sense. I could not fit one more tiny thing into my life, so anything new would require sacrificing something existing. I actually felt pretty amazing then—like the well of my creative powers was so deep that it would never dry up. I thought I was on a rocket ship that would only go UP! But things eventually ebbed and my trajectory shifted.

One thing I've learned since then is that there are grand cycles in life. There are highs and lows, busy eras and calm times, and everything comes around again. Looking at these patterns now, I don't feel like I'm looking at a career I abandoned. I'm looking at this incredible body of work that I'm still building.

And, interestingly, I realized that going back isn't even new for me. There are already patterns in my catalog that I've revisited, reknitted, improved and republished over the years. Apparently I've always liked returning to an old idea to see what else I can do with it.

So that's what I'm going to do.

Some of these patterns are perfectly happy where they are. Some could use a little love. Some have disappeared from the places where they were originally published. And some are giving me ideas all over again.

I'm curious to see where they take me next.

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