ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

I have been working in a very foreign way for me – here in the Netherlands.

My design process is usually more or less as outlined below.

I play with my yarns – and that includes touching it and smelling it, and moving it from one pile to another to see which colours sing for me and then I decide what I could make with the resulting group of yarns. There have been many times when I have had a large sheet on the floor covered in piles of yarn which I may “play” with for some weeks before I begin to knit. I have a patient family, thank goodness.

I have decided to create a piece – and I look for the yarns (playing, smelling, touching as above) until something tells me these that I have gathered together will create my vision and then I start the knitting and if I remember in my excitement to do so, I record the pattern as I am knitting it.

OR

I have been asked to create a piece in a particular colour range or yarn type, or specific pattern/style for a person who has their own personal shape, colouring and style in mind for which I am to create a unique piece. That option is more difficult and requires much discussion and ideas back and forth till a consensus is reached and I use some or all of the above to create a unique piece for a unique person.

BUT

Here in the Netherlands I have been working for many months without a stash of yarns and it has forced me to me more formal in my process and I have been knitting pieces of one yarn only (my heart is breaking), and not just one yarn type but one yarn colour. (Can you feel my heart crying). Now to make this valid for me I have even forced myself to put proposals forward to magazines etc thinking that maybe others will like my more formal work. Formal in that there a design requirement, a yarn to be decided on and a style to envisage and then a pattern to be created and checked and tested and sometimes the garment to be knitted. My pieces are still unique in that they are still a bit quirky in shape or style I hope, but it is a formal process being tested. Will it work I wonder?

BUT my blood pressure has gone up

SO I am reverting to the more passionate form of designing – I am going back, or forward depending on your point of view to creating unique pieces with passion, colour, surprise, uniqueness. Pieces that spark a passion in others, pieces that make people want to stroke them to feel the yarns, and even to looking closely to see just how many different yarns, how many different colours and how they work together.

Most of you will not know about our glorious “K” Road (Karangahape Road, Auckland, New Zealand). I used to work in a little street off the notorious “K” Road. One day when I was walking along on my way to work (as a systems consultant for libraries – believe it or not) wearing one of my multi coloured mohair batwing sweaters. A couple of very tall masculine women in very short skirts spoke to me as they tottered by in their very high heels. “Love your sweater darling”. I loved it – it made my day.

I want that to happen every day.