Which comes first, the pattern or the yarn?

I found myself listening to a podcast today with the featured guest being Vashti Braha, a needlework designer (you can follow her blog at http://designingvashti.blogspot.com) An interesting topic came up as designers (an area with which I am not familiar) can approach a design from two angles: designing the project totally on their own, developing the pattern, selecting the yarn, making the project, OR they can be asked by a yarn company to create a project using a particular yarn, in which case they are provided the yarn with which to make said created design.

Obviously, the second route is a method of selling yarn. However, as a beginning to intermediate knitter, I have always had huge issues with that and here is why.

Some people have huge stashes of yarn. They love to go to shops and buy yarn that appeals to them with no idea at the time of what object they will create with that yarn. This often means that more yarn is purchased than is needed for a given project or the reverse...the perfect project is found and there isn't enough yarn.

I admit to having a larger stash than I will probably ever be able to use (unless I stop buying yarn until what I have is all knit up.) However, I came by my stash honestly because it is all yarn purchased with a specific pattern in mind and I have the patterns to prove it!

I am pattern driven, not yarn driven, however the the two are inexorably intertwined. Now..the reason for the huge stash is because patterns always specify a specific weight of yarn/gage and tell you the yarn that was used to make the item shown in the picture(and there is ALWAYS a picture to lure you in.) Sometimes I look at patterns the way I would look at clothing in a catalog - I want that item, in that yarn - probably in that colorway. So....unless I buy the pattern and the yarn when I see it, chances are that by the time I get around to pulling out the pattern, the yarn will be discontinued.

On the true confessions side, I found a magazine with two patterns that I wanted to make. One was a scarf, the other was a pair of gauntlets that I thought would be perfect for one of my nieces. I tried the scarf with a different yarn bought at my local yarn shop, didn't like it, and went online to find the same yarn used in the picture. It came out great and the recipient loved it. Now for the gauntlets. Well, even though this was a current magazine and a current pattern, low and behold, the yarn had been discontinued. There was nothing overly special about this particular gauntlet pattern - in fact I don't particularly like gauntlets and I'm not so sure I will enjoy figuring out how to do the thumb parts. What was special and screamed out about these gauntlets was the yarn.

So.....it was back to the internet to try my best to find this now discontinued yarn. I searched everywhere I could find for this yarn and my persistence paid off. I found it! In France! I had to resort to higher level math to calculate the exchange rate and total cost including shipping and determine just how badly I wanted to make these gauntlets. Fortunately for my niece, the total cost was reasonable for a Christmas present and I ordered the yarn. It is now in my stash and toward the end of the summer I will have to drop everything and start those gauntlets.

But the point, despite my detour into finding the "same" yarn, is that what motivates me initially to make something is the pattern, not the yarn. Sometimes I have the courage to "change it up" and sometimes I want my catalog item, but for me, it always starts with design.