Want to sell me armloads of yarn? Slap a name on it like Flamboyant Cuttlefish or Golden Tortoise Beetle or Amber Trinket, and I'll happily fill my shopping cart to overflowing.
"Oh I just love that yarn in colorway 342!" just doesn't have the same pizzazz as "That scarf will look great in Malabrigo Mechita "Mandragora!" I quite understand that most huge yarn companies are reluctant to worry about color names when they change them every year. But still.
Want me to buy your pattern? Call it Parseltongue Hat, Iron Maiden, Sea Dragon Shawl or Hypernova Shawl. I often feel disappointed by the relatively colorless names given to patterns in the knitting magazines--or worse, when the project is named for the color of the yarn they picked, not some unique attribute of the design. An indie designer on Ravelry of course has to market harder than Vogue Knitting; a great name becomes an insider byword. Say "what a gorgeous Leftie!" or "I can't wait to finally cast on a Honey Cowl!" and a whole lot of folks in the yarn store will chime in.
So, "Fern Hat" isn't an exciting name, but the hat does look very ferny, so that's OK. At least the yarn is called Green Darner Dragonfly. I tried so hard to use that skein sooner, as it was one of the first things I ever bought from now-sadly-defunct Cephalopod Yarns. I really wanted to use it for a shawl pattern called Dragonfly -- so appropriate, right? -- but alas the yarn was a bit too fat for a delicate lacy design.
And I still have Gather Ye Rosebuds Hat, Butterfly Sunset Beret, Song of the Sea cowl and Vitamin D cardigan in my pattern queue. So I'm good.
No comments:
Post a Comment