ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

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 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.

 

Cape knitted with mohair and faux fur fibre

I have created quite a few knitted capes of several different styles over the last few years and have decided to make this knitting pattern available on Ravelry as soon as I can.

Intarsia knitting is where sections of color are knitted in different colours and yarns and the yarn is not carried across the back of the work as is done in Fair Isle knitting. The yarn ends are left to be picked up and knitted on return to that section of the knitting.

Intarsia is a woodworking term, where it refers to inlaying different colours or types of wood to create a design.

When knitting using the intarsia method yarn is wound onto bobbins, or long strands of yarn are used for each block of color. At the point where you are changing the colour in a row, one drops the colour in use and picks up the next colour from underneath the original yarn to reduce the risk of holes showing in completed piece. The main difficulty with intarsia knitting is that your yarns WILL tangle. According to many books and articles on intarsia knitting one should use bobbins to wind the lengths of individal colour and allow loose only the length that you are knitting with.

I have bobbins – but I do not use them and yes I do get into a tangle from to time, but this adds drama to the process. I knit on circular needles and whenever possible or practical (which is most of the time) I knit the body of a sweater, the fronts and back of a jacket or cardigan at one time – this means the intarsia sections travel around the piece in an interesting fashion. With careful management when using one colour of a manageable length, dropping it, picking up the next and maybe having 10 or more colours in a row and your yarns are hanging down as they should and you turn the work always one way and then back the reverse way they do not get so crossed over and messy. Well that is the theory anyway.

Because my intarsia is freeform, that is I work to an idea, not to a written or graphed design on a piece – if it is too tangled then I break the yarn and continue with a new colour, or if required I rejoin the yarn. My artist friends tell me that knitting this way is an art form – that is I paint with yarns. I am happy with that view.

The biggest issue with knitting this way is not the tangles BUT the ends. In early days I left the yarn ends to the end (foolish) and then sewed or wove the ends in when the garment was completed.

**** DO NOT DO THAT****

Take the time to knit / weave in the ends as you go – otherwise it can take as long to finish the piece as it did to create it. You do not need that.

When I knitted my cloak (The Great New Zealand Cloak), I left all the yarn ends to the very end. My darling daughter sat over nearly a whole day and night trimming the ends as I sewed them in. She vowed to never do it again with me – but she still helps if I get so excited at what I am creating that I do not judiciously finish as I go.

And then of course she does owns a large collection of unique intarsia knits.

There is no way to ever repeat exactly a piece using my method of knitting intarsia – so if you want to knit a unique piece – try the intarsia free form system – let your creativity rule, play with your colours, mix your yarn types – spread them out, select a garment type and go and play.

at the Randolph St Gallery – Whitecliffe School of Fine Arts & Design. September 2007.

ConnieLene’s unique knit designs alongside the work of BFA Fashion design students from Whitecliffe.

The Vogue Knitting Tour of Australia and New Zealand 2007, hosted by Nicky Epstein and Carla Scott, Vogue Knitting Knitting Editor attended the special opening.

 

Now that set me up to be creating really wonderful unique pieces. Until this challenge came along I had created many garments for family and friends and some for exhibitions and they were all unique, with many colours and yarns – but they were sweaters, cardigans, jackets, vests – normal stuff.

I had always created my own patterns – by which I mean I worked out the number of stitches and the colours and any textural additions – I didn’t write down my patterns. I didn’t think anyone would be interested in them. I knitted in a free form way – so that any design on a garment was worked out as I went.

This competition however, was a real departure for me.

For the great New Zealand Cloak – I created a cloak, an absolutely wearable cloak. It sits well on the wearer, and is light and warm and envelopes one in luxury.

I used many colours and a great variety of yarns – silk, mohair, linen, artifical fibres, cotton etc. I had an idea of an island, with the sea, the sand, the lowland/farmlands, the hill country and the snow topped mountains. I didn’t draw a picture. I sorted yarns into the colour sections and knitted the entire piece from the bottom edge. I added a few crocheted embellishments to add texture and increase the tactile experience – they were to indicate trees and plants of the New Zealand bush. The cream linen tassels on the black strips at the sides – was to show that this was a New Zealand cloak, the original Maori people of New Zealand wore cloaks which were woven flax with tassels.

The maths for the shaping decreases, and yarn and needle thickness was worked out with a calculator and paper and pencil – my son Morgan and husband John worked it out for me. They were the maths wizards in our household, I just hoped that I was the knitting queen. I did try to find a pattern for a cape/cloak, but wasn’t able to – which is why we created it ourselves. It would have been easier to have had a pattern to create a design on.

I was working full time as Customer Support person in the library software industry. I got up in the morning and knitted till I went to work, came home and continued to knit, and eventually John would come and tell me I really should go to bed. I knitted in the weekends, and over one night just before completion date when I absolutely had to have it finished to be delivered to Pamela at the Compendium Gallery in Devonport, Auckland, New Zealand. The gallery is now in the High Street in Auckland.

My family cooked, cleaned, washed clothes etc – I slept, dreamt, knitted, pictured this cloak and nothing else in that time.

It took me 6 weeks.

In my young years as a Danish child in a non English speaking immigrant family I “read” my mothers Danish knitting pattern books to fill the time. This may account for the knitting medium.

As an artist I am passionate about colour and texture and use my knits to surprise and encourage in the wearer a confidence of expression. A confidence to wear the unusual and to enjoy how it feels and how the colours shift and adjust depending on the light of the day or space one is in. A confidence to wear magic.

My work is usually created with natural fibres in many colours – wool, silk, cotton, linen, and mohair, and for textural experience and visual excitement include artificial fibres to further enhance a unique item. I am also using the newer yarns such as bamboo.

I have exhibited for a number of years at the Compendium Gallery in Auckland New Zealand, and created pieces that have gone to New Zealand, the USA, Great Britain, Switzerland, East Timor, and Denmark. In New Zealand my work has been included in exhibitions in Auckland, Napier, Wellington, and Whangarei.

“Gumbo Ya-Ya” was an exciting multi-media exhibition of paintings, sculpture and knit garments, held at the Yvonne Rust Gallery, The Quarry, in Whangarei, Northland, New Zealand.

Mardi Gras, colour and the hidden was the focus of The Yvonne Rust Gallery’s Gumbo YaYa (a bit of everything) exhibition. Melanie FerDon, Trina Garratt and I curated the multimedia exhibition.

 

Excerpt from Leader newspaper

Mardi Gras, colour and the hidden is the focus of The Yvonne Rust Gallery’s Gumbo Ya Ya (a bit of everything) exhibition on now.
Melanie FerDon, Trina Garratt and Connie Johnston curate the multimedia exhibition.
Melanie FerDon is American-born, but has been in New Zealand since 1982 and is now in her final year of a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Whitecliffe College of Art and Design. She is a contemporary painter of human figures in dark, rich colours on large canvases.

Danish-born artist Connie Johnston is a textile-wearable artist working mainly with natural fibres. Over the past 30 years she has had her designs, which have been included in many exhibitions and competitions, selling worldwide.

Trina Garratt is New Zealand-born and has studied at the Cut Above Academy, where she specialised in special effects make-up, and Whitecliffe College of Art and Design, where she has also exhibited. She has been the special effects artist for the Auckland War Memorial Museum for the “Whodunnit” exhibition as well as numerous short films and the popular television series Xena Warrior Princess.

There are three large paintings, four sculptures, and eight sweaters and a magnificent cloak in the exhibition which runs until Thursday.