Partially- and fully-finished sweaters are piling up, yarn is crammed into and onto every available surface, and people coming into my office generally back out again, slowly and making eye contact the whole way.
(Translation: We’re nearing photoshoot time for the next book. Want some sneak peeks?)
But before I dive back into my wool and head out to Natural Stitches and the Three Rivers knitting guild, I wanted to take a few minutes and talk about CustomFit recipes, which I think win the (dubious) award for being the single most confusing thing about CustomFit.
For those of you who haven’t had time to play around with the sweater generator yet, right now CustomFit offers you two basic ways to get a sweater. I’ve created six simple designs, which I think of as “Classics”. These are a few of the most beloved sweater shapes in fashion:
For these designs, the only choice you need to make is which of our “fits” you’d like the sweater to be. Easy-peasy.
The other way to create a sweater is to step through our custom sweater wizard:
(Here’s a one-page image of all of the options that are in the custom sweater wizard. You can mix and match however you like.)
These choices give you a ton of options – they essentially let you decide what you want to wear, and then create a pattern for your perfect sweater from scratch.
But many knitters don’t want to create a sweater in their head – they want to create a specific design they’ve seen in a photo.
(Let’s use Tucci as an example.)
Right now, CustomFit produces what I’ve come to think of as “sweater blanks”. A sweater pattern that will produce a perfectly-fitting garment, in your gauge… …but a fairly “clean slate” one.
Design takes a particular “sweater blank” and adds what I like to think of as “bling” – stitch patterns, putting this together with that, etc. A crew-neck cardigan with long, tapered sleeves becomes Tucci with the addition of the stripe sequence, blanket stitch, and collar:
CustomFit Recipes are short sets of instructions that help you use CustomFit to get a sweater that looks like a design.
To continue the example: For Tucci, pictured above, the recipe tells you:
- Which choices to make in the custom sweater wizard to get that “sweater blank”,
- The stripe pattern, and where to place it,
- Collar instructions, and
- Instructions for the blanket stitch trim.
Make sense?
I’ve now released recipes for most of my self-published designs. You can find them all here, in my Ravelry store. (A dedicated recipe page here on this site is in the works, too.) They’re inexpensive, because you will still need to purchase a CustomFit pattern to get complete instructions. But they’re not free, because I want to make a clear statement that the design part of designing is a valuable thing to do, and I want the other designers who are releasing CustomFit recipes to be able to feel good about charging for them.
(Yes, you caught that right! Other people are also working on CustomFit recipes – so exciting! Once they are out in the world, we’ll be sure to tell you all about them and we’ll have a prominent page on the CustomFit site itself, listing them all.)
Pattern purchase choices break down like this:
or
I hope this post clears up some of the confusion? If not, please ask any questions you have in the comments and I’ll definitely clarify. Thanks for reading, and see you on the flip side of PA!
–Amy
Amy Herzog Designs