2022 Mood Board / What is a mood board in knitting?

Hands Occupied's 2022 knitting mood board. | A collage of inspiration for modern knitting, with text reading, — *images via sources below*

One of the coolest things about being a pattern designer, whether in the knitting & crochet world or otherwise, is gathering inspiration. I personally am a huge fan of following blogs and using Pinterest to catalog things I find inspiring (private boards are especially useful for working on secret design projects). Gathering inspiration together like this helps me to zoom out of my anxious everyday brain and find what’s consistently inspiring me. It helps me see the forest instead of the trees… squirrels… leaves…. haunted witchy cottage… you see what I mean.

*taco sweater: Joseph at London Fashion Week Fall 2016*

Cloud sweater from a handbag marketing campaign, found via pinterest — *cloud sweater from a handbag marketing campaign*

Mood boards & how they’re used in the knit design world

When a designer submits to a design call for a book or magazine, we are often given two pieces of guidance: a short design brief describing the goals for the pattern collection, and a mood board. Mood boards sound kind of fancy-schmance, but they’re really just a collage of inspiring images, pattern silhouettes, color palettes, etc. These are often either photoshopped together in a PDF or gathered into a sometimes-private Pinterest board you must request to see. The goal? Inspire a bunch of designers (often folks who will never meet, which is so weird!) to design patterns that “go” together in an intentional way.

Since I’m used to drawing inspiration so often from mood boards, I thought it might be helpful to apply that approach to my work for the year. For a few months, I’ve been saving inspiring images, and now that I’ve been able to take a step back, the images in this post should help give you idea of the vibe for Hands Occupied’s 2022 knitting designs. Let me know which of these cute garments is your favorite!