Design Topic: Where Can You Find Ideas?

Dear users and authors,
where can you find ideas for new designs or creative crafts?
Let me know.

Lately, I’ve been drawing inspiration from these beautiful yarn cakes.
It often happens that someone I know would like a shawl in specific colors. And when I see a yarn cake like that, I often find that the colors remind me of something specific. I try to capture that in my patterns.
That’s how I came up with the trumpet flower pattern for my mother’s shawl. When I was a child, she had such beautiful trumpet flowers on the patio, and the colors of the yarn cake were just like summers back then.

But very often, my kids simply want something specific. And they have very precise ideas about how something should look. That doesn’t leave me much room for creativity.

Hey there!

My two main sources of inspiration are Pinterest and the comments and requests I get from my readers, followers, and viewers on my blog and YouTube channel. Some of my favorite amigurumi actually came about simply because someone asked me to design them :)

Best regards,
Mareike

I think it’s the same for all creators: once you’ve focused your attention on developing something, your mind is constantly working in that direction, and everything you see—whether online, in stores, or anywhere else, consciously or unconsciously—is processed into new designs. Then all that’s left is to choose one idea from this smorgasbord that fits the season, is in demand by customers, or that you yourself absolutely want to try out right away. Deciding on an idea—that’s actually the hardest part :-).

My ideas are all in my head.

Some are already finished and just waiting to be brought to life. Others, on the other hand, come to me while I’m working on the project in question.

I’ve put quite a few ideas back on the back burner because they aren’t turning out the way I want them to.

For me, ideas usually come from a need. Either because I want something specific myself (and usually can’t find it) or because friends and family ask me for something.

A rough draft forms in my head, then I make a sketch with measurements, and then I just get started. Often, something completely different ends up emerging while I’m knitting or crocheting. This happens to me a lot, especially when knitting—my creativity runs wild, and the result ends up being much nicer than what I originally planned.

Ideas actually come all the time. The biggest problem is putting them all into practice. Sometimes inspiration comes from the yarn, sometimes from things you see, sometimes from specific requests, and sometimes from nature. I never lack ideas—just time.

For me, it’s just like Inna already wrote. All my impressions—the internet, TV, store windows, magazines—just keep pouring into my brain :)
I can bring a lot of these ideas to life, but I also discard some of them. Right now, I’ve been working on a new project: a bag. I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted in my head. But after tinkering with it for 2–3 days, I came up with a completely different idea for the pattern. I’m working on that right now and hope it turns out well.

I have lots of sources myself, from Pinterest to catalogs. But there’s one thing I especially love: browsing through my books and magazines again and again. I love buying old craft books at flea markets—they’re a treasure trove of patterns… wonderful. I even still have a few magazines from the ’60s and ’70s from my childhood.  Then it’s a matter of experimenting, unraveling, and so on. I just love trying everything out. In the end, everything turns out completely different from the original plan, and I stay true to my preference for simple, smaller projects without too many frills. But that’s exactly what makes me happy.
Best regards, Caro