New York Minknit

The other day I said very loudly on the subway, “Wait, what does OPP mean?” Adam was like, “Shhhh!” Apparently I grew up during the ’80s in a bubble of innocence about Naughty By Nature lyrics.

Anyway, I was looking at the preview for the new Fall Interweave Knits and I noticed that two of the patterns in the issue were very similar to ideas that had been in my head. I did exactly nothing with these ideas, since I am strangely addicted to knitting socks, but this just goes to show how easy it is to have the same ideas as someone else. (Even though I kept these ideas in my brain, I was like “Hey! Interweave! You stole my thunder!” when of course, they did nothing of the sort.)

The first one was the Freyja hat, by Courtney Kelley :

I even have this exact yarn (Road to China) in my stash–I bought three skeins of it, and I had planned a very similar stranded zig-zag pattern in three different colors for a cowl or a hat.

The other was the Farmer’s Market Cardigan, by Connie Chang Chinchio:

I was like “Grr!” because I had this exact idea–a shawl collar that forms the border for a pocket. I have to say though that I was inspired by someone I saw on the subway wearing a sweater with this feature, so I was hardly original in thinking of it. But I hadn’t seen it in any knitting patterns so I felt a little special in thinking it up, but I guess I can’t really claim credit for it if I did nothing about it.

Random note: Other things I like to claim credit for include inventing the word “defriend” and the idea of high-end  street food for Western audiences (*cough* I’m looking at you Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Spice Market *cough*). There was a part in The Lost Father, by Mona Simpson (an all-around great book) about how the narrator is convinced she started the trend of leather backpacks, and I was very sympathetic. Sometimes you feel like you invented something, even if you probably didn’t.