I've spent some time around wine and winemakers. If you've ever spent any time with a winemaker, you'll know that he/she spends a lot of time tasting and testing the wine being made. It's an ongoing process, more an art really. If the winemaker didn't taste regularly, that magical moment when it's time to bottle the wine may elude him or her. Disaster.
However, any good winemaker worth his/her grapes will also tell you that to drink one's own wine exclusively is to stop exercising an important muscle. If all the winemaker drank were his/her own wine, the tastebuds would become dulled to the other exquisite range of flavors and complexities to be found in other wine bottles. He or she must taste other vintner's wares regularly. In essence, the good winemaker must become a wine fan.
So, too, with design. I'm certainly fond of my own designs (!), but I don't want to stop appreciating and, hopefully, making other of my favorite designers' patterns. What would the world be without a great Doris Chan top-down crocheted cardigan, or Norah Gaughan's wonderfully unique knit cable creations, or a Susanna IC crescent-shaped shawl? A far less fashionably tasteful place, let me tell you.
So who are your favorite designers? If you had one last project to make before meeting that great Dodger in the sky, what would it be?
