ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

Aug 17, 10:51pm

Will I dream the skirt stitch counts? k1 – 25, slip 1, k1, PSSO, k1-25, slip 1, k1, PSSO, k1, will it work like counting sheep? snore bizzzz

Aug 18, 10:42am

Skirt is still in progress – think about the lace, not sure yet if I will add it. Maybe the lack of time will influence the decision.

12:31pm

Brain dead in the knit dept today. Skirt is at crisis point – what to do?????? stop or go on ???

12:35pm

should I be tweeting, kweeting, kneeting, knieting, knitting? I think I should, I think I could, I think I will, I think I am KNITTING now!!

2:30pm

Skirt at 200 stitches, casting off, then I will check my brain & decide what next. Brain is a little strung out just now, need colour & drama!

7:40pm

Skirt is sitting on chair saying go on, do something, do something else, go on. So I did do something. I bought yarn at De Afstap in Amsterdam

10:19pm

Thinking of top part of this outfit. Is it really called that today? I don’t know. I am to create full deal – top to toe for the parade.

10.25pm

Top design loses, bed wins. Brain is shutting down. I was skyping NZ at 1.30am my time (NL) to talk with sister at 11.30am her time (NZ)

Aug 19, 9:19am

Pile of mags, internet, knit books, ideas file, friend Meredith in Adelaide, We have to design the perfect top to go with the perfect skirt.

From Connielene – NOT A TWEET: There will be no more pictures – as I do have to keep the lid on what I am creating. I will still tweet a little of course so there may be a further chapter in the story of Lake Hawea.

Tweets for the uninitiated – can be no more than 140 characters. If you take the trouble to count the tweet characters you will see that mine here are 140 or 141 or 142. What that means is that I have added a full stop, or a space when I added them to my blog – which I ignored when I tweeted to keep the piece within the 140 characters.

I need to check properly for the coming winter trends as I have now committed to creating a piece for The Mirror WoolOn™ Creative Fashion Event at the Alexandra Blossom Festival in New Zealand.

Come and celebrate the arrival of spring in Alexandra, Central Otago, New Zealand – 24th September to 9th October 2010. I know here in Europe we are preparing for Autumn and Winter then, so why not participate in an event that celebrates the arrival of spring down under.

It is an historic Festival that has marked the arrrival of spring for over 50 years. The first festival was born out of community spirit and recognition of the special character of Alexandra, and these values remain at the heart of every subsequent festival.

There is still time to register for the fashion event that is “WoolOn” – the late entries close on 15th August 2010.

Back to the work at hand.

I really want to create an edgy out there piece, but I am not really sure what that means.

I have Touch Yarns – 4ply variegated – which I hope to incorporate – and I am thinking of something lacey, covered with something faux furry and a tight little skirt – maybe or something else – so some research is required and as I don’t really think my assessment of the Vogue Trends reports is going to help me very much; I am searching the web for the trends, and not just relying on Vogue for a view point – and I have found the following

These fashion trends suggest a poncho with long fringes and quilted patchwork fabric, over a maxi dress with a turtleneck, which is worn over wide pants which cover the thigh length boots. Finished with gloves and a military style vest with a high collar worn over the dress and under the poncho.

This does not sound like edgy out there fashion, it sounds like 60′s hippy regurgitated for this coming winter season. I am having trouble with my creation based on these trends, and there is no lace – darn; as I was hoping to show the world I can knit lace. At least my favourite knitting method – intarsia can be used to create the patchwork for the poncho.

And then there is the colour – In 2010, camel is the new black and is ready to invade the streets. It really doesn’t work for me – so it is back to the research.

I Love Colour
I Love Colour Work
I love Intarsia
I love playing with colour in my creations

So you are not sure about how to proceed with adding colour to your work?

Cheat a little

Don’t knit a picture in intarisa
Don’t knit with a design in mind

Do knit with a colour theme
Do knit with an abstract free form kind of freedom

go with the flow of the yarns you have to hand and this is especially easy if you have variegated, self striping or oddments of various thickness, colour or texture in your yarn stash. This is stash busting 101.

You can add colour to your knitting with the help of those yarns – whatever they are – be they variegated, self-striping, or two or more different colours of yarn knitted together. Let the yarns do the work and take away some of the guesswork and planning to add the colour to your knitting. Simple intarsia or stripes with these yarns adds excitement and drama to whatever you are creating. Whatever you create this way cannot be repeated ever. You will create a unique piece.

Self-Striping Yarn:

Creating with a self-striping yarn is an easy way to add colour and drama to your knitting as the yarn changes colours for you. These are great for knitters who want to add colour to their work, but are not yet confident about choosing and knitting with many yarns as in intarsia, or on deciding on a colour range.

When I am creating with self striping or variegated yarns I often use a solid for my bands. But I may change to a range of solids – one colour each for the two wristbands and the bottom edge as well as another colour for the neck edge. Or I will use black or brown for every band or edge but I will cast on with the coloured yarn. Either way it produce a unique piece and the effect is wonderful.

The garment or piece created with a self striping yarn will most likely have colour changes that line up more or less in stripes along the piece. The stripes will be deeper on a narrower section of knitting such as the sleeves and thinner on the body or wider section of the knitting.

But you can still play – You could choose two or more self striping yarns or one complimentary solid along with the one or more complimentary self striping yarns and create a unique piece by doing free form intarsia with only two or three yarns.

Self-striping yarn can be used with any stitch, but depending on your design wish, the stripes can display more clearly with a Stocking Stitch (Stockinette Stitch), or reverse Stocking Stitch project. But this is colour work – and any stitch or pattern that that you like and enjoy is perfect. There are simply no rules in this. Just Play.

Working with Multiple Strands:

Knitting with two or more strands of yarn together is another way to add colour, drama, magic, individuality, uniqueness and texture to a project.

There may be some technical management issues for you when knitting two or more strands together – that is the yarn will tend to twist and tangle – NOTE that it does not adversely affect the finished knitting and there are ways to reduce the problem should it drive you crazy.

You can wind the yarns together in a ball, or feed the individual yarns from a separate ziploc bag. Or you could go with the flow of the knitting – you are playing with colour after all, and you are creating a unique piece – SO be brave – Break the yarn, add another colour and continue knitting. Wind the tangled yarn back to the ball it came from and add it to the knitting again later.

Variegated or Multi coloured yarn:

I love variegated yarns – and I love the surprises one gets as the knitting progresses.

Variegated or Multi coloured yarn can create colour pooling which may be an issue depending on your view of it. You could also call it a design feature and just take advantage of it.

Colour pooling is a bit unpredictable. Manage it by changing the yarn when you can see that you are developing a pool – for example: The colour red has a couple of sections/rows together – so break the yarn when you are back at the red section. Reattach at the red point on the yarn to be knitted so that the Red pool becomes bigger – and a design feature. You will have a short section of yarn of other colours – keep it and you will find somewhere else to add this into your knitting. Weave in the yarn ends as you go.

Add Swiss darning over your knitted stitches, when you have completed the piece – to alter the way the colour looks either by making the pool of colour larger or by adding another colour to distract from the pool if you do not like the effect.

Include slip stitches to break up a block of colour – the slipped stitch colour then shows in the next row – breaking the colour section of the new row.

Free form design on Beret

Add a Stripe where you do not want the colour to pool, or insert a two row stripe of another colour every 4 or 6 rows of the varigated yarn knitting.

You can also work from the centre and the outside of the same yarn ball to knit two rows with from the inside and two from the outside.

or do what I do – call it a design feature whatever happens.

It is your project, do what feels right for you.

Trust your own instincts

and Play with Colour

I feel like I am buried under balls of many types – polystyrene for textile art knit applications in the public arena as well as hundreds of balls of yarn for patterns and ideas – and I come up for air and hope the ball in my hand is suitable for the idea running around in my head.

I have purchased 2 large polystyrene balls – one about 160 cm round and the other about 124cm. These nearly match two out in the big wide world. It means I do not have to go out and test the knitting against the balls.

The problem is, or it may not a problem and just something new to consider. I want to create textile art pieces for these balls for permanent exhibition.

How do you keep a ball standing still?

How will a knitted textile stand up to being on a spherical object long term?

Does anyone do it already – so that I can find out the answer to the permanancy question?

I think small round weights of some kind will hold it steady, or perhaps the ball could be set into a round saucer shape inside a square plinth or stand, or something. That part can be worked out quite well.

But the spherical textile – what will happen there – I do not know. So only time will tell, or maybe someone will help me with that information. I do hope so.

The trouble is that these balls keep on coming into my head space – and I am working on my patterns, and I do need to do to that to help pay for future yarns, and I am just a bit discombobulated.

I am also working out which patterns to include in my Intarsia book – so I become even more discombobulated – if that is possible.

If you are new to Intarsia you may have questions that I could answer which will help you with what you are creating now. Those questions may also give me additional ideas on what should be included in my Intarsia book.

I have started a topic “Intarsia Knitting”, on my Facebook business page under the tab Discussions requesting questions and queries on Intarsia knitting.

The book, which has no name as yet, will cover the skills of knitting using the Intarsia method from working with a basic graph to how I work in the free form way.

It will cover the technical aspects – geared to a learning Intarsia knitter and develop the skills in increments from graph, geometric to free form, over a range of projects. The project patterns will be included. So far projects include a small wall hanging, a sweater, and a jacket.

This is an important project for me – and it has been rummaging around in my head for a long time. Now is the time for me to make it happen. Please join me on the ride as we can all benefit from each others skills, interests, and especially queries.

Shadow Knitting is something I have often thought about working with but had never quite got to trying it out. I didn’t want to create pictures as such, but would like to see how I could explore its use as an art form.

I had the opportunity to put forward a proposal for an art piece to the International Textile Exhibition being held in the Netherlands in 2010. The theme is “Sporen” or “Tracks” – I have taken the view that what we will leave behind will be plastic, lots of plastic; or the current hotspot, The Carbon Footprint. They didn’t get excited about the piece I created but it was an interesting experiment with shadow knitting and I am going to continue working with it. I can see such creative and artistic opportunities.

On the way to my “Carbon Footprint” art piece I created several small wall hangings to fit into the 20″ by 20″ frame as required for the exhibition. The first was a knitted scene – which I then felted. I like it well enough, but not enough to put it forward. Yes I could have embellished it and I will probably do that sometime.

My next piece was to include plastic, as my view of the world is that we will all finally be buried under a mountain of plastic. I roughly cut various plastic bags into strips, nothing too tidy as plastic is not tidy. I also visited a very dim “rabbit warren” of a junk shop here in Haarlem and came out with many odd plastic things – stuff that had been created as advertising gimmicks – key rings, swizzle sticks, some toy bits etc which I was going to include in my knitted Everest. It is pure rubbish for which I paid an exorbitant amount of money. It was stuff that should never have been created and had been doomed to linger on the very dusty shelves of a large, dim, untidy, disorganised junk shop until the crazy knitter rolled in. Of course if I had used it – maybe I would have had to go back and find some more. My hands were rather blackish and grubby when I emerged and it was not that good for my lungs either. I did knit my 20″ by 20″ Everest – of plastic using the shadow knitting technique. I like it, but it didn’t quite demonstrate what I had hoped and time was running out – and by then my best beloved had suggested “The Carbon Footprint”. I think Everest is the beginnings of a much larger piece, 20″ by 20″ was too small for my Everest.

I purchased a digitally restored eBook which included the pattern for a crocheted bathmat with a chart to embroider a footprint on the crocheted bathmat. This pattern was originally published by The American Thread Company, Star Rug Book No. 93, in 1952.

I redesigned the chart for a knitted foot print after I had tried and failed with the chart as it was. The re-engineered footprint was then knitted in black mohair, with the background of a natural coloured varigated sock yarn and finished with a black crochet edge. It was not deemed suitable for the exhibition BUT it has set me off in a new direction and I had thought I would only ever create with many, many colours and fibres and that I would use the intarsia method of knitting till I slip this mortal coil. Not so – I am learning so many more knitting techniques here in the Netherlands.

I think of that and wonder why that could be and the only conclusion I can come to is that in New Zealand there are many things happening around me and I am easily led from my work.

Here there is only me, this little house, my yarn, my best beloved is at work, I shop for groceries, walk the canals, watch the birds, ride my bike (not alone you understand – we go out on the bikes together), out on the polders and to the North sea, visit museums and galleries – there is really nothing to interfere with the creative process – so I am more creative.

I don’t know.

Shadow knitting – a technique of knitting alternating rows of dark and light yarn to produce a subtle patterning that appears and disappears depending on the angle from which it is viewed. The shadow knitting queen is Vivian Hoxbro.

On our holiday in Denmark, in August, we were taken to the Old Town (Den Gamle By), by Anne and Michelle where I discovered (or rediscovered) the Danish shawl – and I have made 4 so far – just to see how they work. I have played with the shape and number of Yarn Over increases to see how I can modernise it as the original is wrapped around at the waist and tied at the front which is absolutely charming, but not too modern looking.

The Danish Shawl is not a true triangle – The long edge is curved, which makes it sit well over the shoulders.

The first one I started at the point and increased only on the sides – and of course, as I knew it would – it created a true triangle. I knitted it in gorgeous purples/blues in SandnesGarn (from Norway), yarns that I purchased in the north of Denmark. That was for Natasha

I then looked for a pattern and found the Osark shawl – and have been playing with that. My first attempt is not even worthy of a photo, the shape looked like a salmon steak – not the colour – but the resulting shape was too long and not wide enough. It will be unraveled at some time. But it gave me a starting point.

My next was okay, I have not added the 2 colour crochet edging as yet. I used a grey/fawn 100 % natural yarn with a variegated New Zealand yarn from Manukau Knitting Mills.

The latest shawl / scarf I have created had increases – by single Yarn Overs at the 2 side edges as well as up the middle and has been knitted with a variety of 4 ply yarns which has included sock yarn, Rowan kidsilk haze, Rowan 4 ply Botany and some other odd scraps. The bell ruffle edge I used is from a pattern by Jane Sowerby. I love the resulting shawl/scarf and will create fingerless gloves to go with it. (That means double pointed needles – very scary !!).

I have aready created the hat using the same yarns last winter.

It is amazing what knitting opportunities there are when you live in the Northern Climes as opposed to New Zealand.

A pattern will be created.

One thing I had not realised as I was preparing for the Colour Play exhibition to which I knew the Vogue Knitting tour group with Carla Scott and Nickey Epstein were attending, was that I had any hot pink yarns at all.

Melissa had said to me that I had to create a jacket, or waistcoat in hot pink as this was the in colour for 2007. I didn’t really believe her and I couldn’t rush out to buy a substantial range of yarns and colours in hot pink because that meant going to many shops all over Auckland to look for a good range – and there was no time to do that on top of creating the garments that I had already planned.

So we hunted through my stash – and to my amazement I had a lot of hot pinks or other colours to blend and balance with my hot pinks and so I created the “Hot Pink” sleeveless jacket. It turned out a real stunner and Melissa claimed it as her own as she had made me create something different, something very different. This really was playing with colour for the “Colour Play” exhibition.