ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

The balls are back like rows of Bridesmaids awaiting to move forward in the church.

They will look grand back in position. Trouble is, and I do not know if this is trouble yet, there were 24 balls (not the 25 I originally stated), now there are 20 waiting. I do hope the evenly spaced balls will look as grand on this elegant curve if there are only 20. It could also be that when I go back today that another 4 will have materialised.

A Yarnbombing, A Graffiti Art Knit installation, or an Urban Art installation will occur here again I am sure. I do hope the powers that be in Haarlem will let them sit and rest a little before removing them next time.

I am gobsmacked, my heart is pounding – the news is in: the balls are back. That is the great concrete balls of Haarlem Town Square (Grote Markt) are back. They are not back in their original position as yet, they are sitting and waiting to be repositioned as the road works continue.

So just maybe a yarnbombing, a graffiti art knit installation, urban art piece, yarn storming, street art piece will be able to be installed in Haarlem again.

Did you know that according to Wikipedia yarn bombing is almost exclusively about reclaiming and personalizing sterile or cold public places?

Having said that I do not think that the Haarlem Town Square is a sterile and cold public space. We have had wonderful meals here, fresh mint tea here, greeted Sinter Klaas here, farewelled Sinter Klaas here. We have bought bird food for the birds, partridge for us, and winter truffle, olives, olive oil, flowers, fish and yarn here in this square. We have listened to jazz at the Annual Haarlem Jazz festival as well as at various venues around the square. We have participated in food and wine tastings, been enticed by the idea of the Keukenhof Gardens and so much more.

Can you say that about your town square?

We have crunkled across the snow, taken our bikes through the square (once), welcomed Olympians to the square, participated a couple of times at the local stitch ‘n Bitch at the square. We have eaten kibbeling, frites, stroopwafels, poffertjes but not raw herring in the square. Tried various beers, wines, olives, and breads, in this square. We have spent a couple of days at a medieval village and market in the square.

There is just nothing cold and sterile about this space.

BUT the balls, the great balls of Haarlem, now they were cold.

I do not know the name of the model wearing my Great New Zealand Cloak – but it was a nice surprise to find this photograph today. I had followed an advertisement for the upcoming Italian “Vogue Knitting Italia 2010″ tour and explored and found this photograph from the 2007 tour which came to New Zealand & Australia. That tour was also hosted by Carla Scott and Nicky Epstein, and we were all delighted to meet them.

Vogue Knitter Tour member wearing The Great New Zealand Cloak

I wonder what we will do next year – to brighten up our winter evenings. It has been necessary in this cold winter with short daylight hours to create something which is new and exciting, to stimulate us, and maybe challenge and also delight others. The Ball Warmers have done that for us, and the tree and scarf was what started it all off, after that fateful email that I received about knit art Graffiti.

Next winter, well I don’t know what we will do. But now we must disrobe the tree and allow nature to create its own wonder with the birds, bees, leaves, grass, flowers, sunshine and the people in the parks. The scarf is no longer required to brighten a winter day.

Could this piece about the tree with a designer scarf have belonged here on Connielene instead of on Our Story here in the Netherlands. I don’t know – so you could check the story by following the link.

For some of the story in photographs see these from Flickr.

Enjoy

We will disrobe the tree today.

I did go into Haarlem Grote Markt (Town Square) last night – just in case the balls were back. It was absolutely freezing cold and there was a different energy than on Tuesday when the Olympians came home.

See the Town Square as I saw it on Tuesday When the Olympians came home

It had been suggested that the magnificant balls of Haarlem had been removed to enable them to set up for the Olympian homecoming party – Sadly those wonderful balls are not back.

They are doing road works next to where the balls were, so maybe, just maybe they will be back when the work is completed.

So that is the news so far – NO Magnificant Balls in Haarlem – I will keep you posted.

The Balls in Wellington City, New Zealand have turned out to be beautiful ball shaped lights – so that is not a good option for covering with a creative textile art piece. Great balls of fire might follow.

We have found natural balls, the Moeraki Boulders on the coast about 40K’s from Dunedin, in New Zealand. We are hoping to find man made spherical objects even further south in Invercargill or on Stewart Island.

But HOW to create a Knitted piece to cover a Haarlem Ball – or other spherical object – that is the question?

You need to know the size of your sphere – ball. My first one was 150cm plus a handspan (my handspan).

I began with 8 stitches, increased to 320 stitches by increasing 8 times on every 4th round (more or less). I knitted this on a circular needle and circularly – entirely appropriate for a circular object.

I used 8 ply or double knit yarn on 4mm needles. The length from the top point to 320 stitches should be around 80cm. I have knitted the last of the top section of about 10 cm in k1p1 rib to help the cover to cling well. It is not a good look to have a baggy saggy ball warmer. There is a bit of give and take – because I didn’t knit this first half with only 8 ply (DK) yarns – I included mohair and faux fur fibres and some cotton yarns. So I needed to measure the piece for length as I knitted and adjust the increases and I will have to do the same when I do the decreases. SO this is not a formal pattern – this is a “suck it and see” piece of knitting.

Decreasing will be the increasing process in reverse – except that I will end up with around 32 stitches because the bottom half doesn’t present the full sphere to you as it is set in concrete. This half will still be created on a circular needle, but is not longer knitted circularly otherwise it will not fit over the ball. So back and forth from the centre down (more or less). I will knit the bottom half in garter stitch to assist it to join more easily – it is awkward to join the ball warmer together as I found with the first Haarlem Ball Warmer. I think I will use velcroe on this one – so that it can be joined more easily and removed more easily. It could then live another day as something else maybe.

There are lots of balls to alter however temporarily here in Haarlem, and also in Maastricht, so maybe they are everywhere in the Netherlands and I have received reports of very large balls in California.

Look at the people not looking at us. How many people went by without so much as a glance sideways. Did they watch from across the square? Were they embarrassed at the sight of two oldies playing with large cold stone balls? Did they wonder what we were up to? Did they speed up on their bikes – so they didn’t have to consider properly what they were seeing? Do they wear blinkers here in Haarlem?

The white ball warmer did fit the Haarlem ball well and it was clearly too large for the Maastricht Ball that we tried it on on Wednesday. So I do know for certain now that this ball here in Haarlem is 160cm round.

The black ball cover is not finished yet, but as Best Beloved said it was still at an embryonic stage.

We will need to install these two in daylight because our little camera and the poor light will make it impossible to see the black ball warmer when it is done if we repeated this at night in the Grote Markt.

When these are done and dusted – installed they will be the Black & White Ball Show

Yesterday I went to Maastricht with my white, large, ball cover – to test it against one of the many balls in Maastricht. Now I had not seen these balls previously, I didn’t know the size, I didn’t know how public the space was, and I didn’t know just how cold it would be.

When I left home in Haarlem at about 7am, the temperature was -5.1, and that is cold and everything was very white. The flurry of snow we expected had covered everything with white icing. Not thick icing, but just enough for that beautiful look.

Now my ball cover and I have not met much in the last week or so, well, not on a regular basis, and it was still unfinished. But my partner in these activities, my best beloved was to be in Maastricht on business and we arranged to meet after one of his meetings – so he could help with the plan. Which meant I had to knit on the train – and I think I’ll tell about that in another post, because that was an experience.

Now Best Beloved had discovered the balls of Maastricht, well he had eventually noticed the balls on one of his many trips there, as you may remember there has been lots of ball talk in our house of recent times. So the balls drifted to the surface one day and he remembered to tell me there are many such balls in Maastricht and Maastricht is very very cold. Have a look here for a story about a very cold Maastricht

As I walked along the road to our rendevous point – it began to snow and it was frightfully cold.

Snowing, a grey ball being disguised as a snow ball

We met, quickly chose a ball, took off our gloves in readiness, BB to take a photo or a video and me to cover the ball. Just picture it, two over 60’s disguised by many layers of clothing, acting oddly by a long row of very cold balls and without the comfort of darkness.

The spot was at a roundabout – and in the centre of the roundabout is a forest of stars. The stars sit on top of poles of various lengths – the lower ones are easily within reach of a tall person and they are all white and those stars turn on the top of the poles with the breeze. Couldn’t they be a coloured forest of stars?

I digress – In the freezing cold we managed one photo, a video with really bad conversation on it – “look at my cold hands, the cover is too big, it fits better because it goes over easier, but that means it is too big. Are you really recording, don’t you have to have your finger pressing the button, My hands are frozen, look at my hands”.

And then we saw the other balls – further in – and they are big like my Haarlem balls.

No, we didn’t do it. It was just so cold that we did not have the courage or strength to take the ball warmer and try to put it onto one of the bigger balls.

We went had lunch at a place called Ipanema instead. The food was great, coffee okay, the place was warm, lovely and warm – but there was nothing Ipanema’ish about it.

I am reorganising the galleries and I hope that if you like free form intarsia, and some more formal intarsia that you will enjoy viewing this gallery.

 

So from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I see that

A sphere (from Greek σφαῖρα—sphaira, “globe, ball”) is a perfectly round geometrical object in three-dimensional space, such as the shape of a round ball. Like a circle in three dimensions, a perfect sphere is completely symmetrical around its center, with all points on the surface lying the same distance from the center point. This distance is known as the radius of the sphere. The maximum straight distance through the sphere is known as the diameter of the sphere. It passes through the center and is thus twice the radius.

In higher mathematics, a careful distinction is made between the sphere (a two-dimensional spherical surface embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space) and the ball (the three-dimensional shape consisting of a sphere and its interior). See the Wikipedia article here

So there we have it

But HOW to knit this spherical object – that is the question?

You need to know the size of your sphere – ball. Mine is 150cm plus a handspan (my handspan).

I began with 8 stitches, increased to 320 stitches by increasing 8 times on every 4th round (more or less). I knitted this on a circular needle and circularly – entirely appropriate for a circular object.

I am using 8 ply or double knit yarn on 4mm needles. The length from the top point to 320 stitches should be around 80cm. I have knitted the last of the top section of about 10 cm in k1p1 rib to help the cover to cling well. It is not a good look to have a baggy saggy ball warmer. There is a bit of give and take – because I didn’t knit this first half with only 8 ply (DK) yarns – I included mohair and faux fur fibres and some cotton yarns. So I needed to measure the piece for length as I knitted and adjust the increases and I will have to do the same when I do the decreases. SO this is not a formal pattern – this is a “suck it and see” piece of knitting.

Decreasing will be the increasing process in reverse – except that I will end up with around 32 stitches because the bottom half doesn’t present the full sphere to you as it is set in concrete. This half will still be created on a circular needle, but is not longer knitted circularly otherwise it will not fit over the ball. So back and forth from the centre down (more or less). I will knit the bottom half in garter stitch to assist it to join more easily – it is awkward to join the ball warmer together as I found with the first Haarlem Ball Warmer. I think I will use velcroe on this one – so that it can be joined more easily and removed more easily. It could then live another day as something else maybe.

There are lots of balls to alter very temporarily here in Haarlem, and also in Maastricht, so maybe they are everywhere in the Netherlands.

What about a countrywide exhibition of altered environments – “The Town Spheres” exhibition. Calling all knitters, crocheters, textile artists, patchworkers, basket weavers, embroiderers, felters and all others I have not mentioned as yet – to take up their needles and threads, yarns, and looms, and just do this.