ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

This will be a great knitting day – I am discarding my Haarlem Ball Project, as without balls there can be no project (that is the news today)

It is a real pity because I was planning a Delft intarsia or fair isle piece, and an orange piece in preparation for Queens Day.

So back to real work today

Knitting, Designing, Colour, Yarn, Abstract ideas, Thinking, Ball Warmers.
Writing, Colour, Intarsia, E-book, Carbon Footprint, Beret’s, Intarsia Jacket, Pattern for Ravelry, Thinking,
Ball Warmers.

It is not as if I have nothing to do.

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.

This is a delightful way to design and then create a unique shawl as a gift or for yourself using only yarns from your stash. Sort through your yarns and find a group of colours that work together, by tone, or colour group, or contrast – whatever excites your eye when you lay them out together. The yarns should knit up at the same approximate gauge.

Select the needle required for the common weight of yarn. For example – Mainly 8 ply or double knit yarns – use a 4 or 4.5 mm needle.
It is generally not a good idea to use fine lace weight yarn unless you choose to use 2 or 3 strands knitted together to approximate the required weight and for the same reason don’t use bulky yarn if you are knitting mostly in double knit or 8 ply yarns. Having said that some yarns completely out of line with the whole can look very interesting and will not put your shawl out of shape as long as you are judicious about the amount you use and where you choose to include it. And I do do it all the time.

Take your yarns and lay them on the table in order of the quantity that you have – maybe 5 balls colour 1, 3 balls colour 2, 1 ball each of colour 3, 4, and 5, and oddments. Never never discard oddments.

Create a sequence for your yarn amounts like I have done for my listed yarn amounts – Col.1, Col.2, Col.3, oddments; Col.1, Col.2, Col.3, Col.4, oddments; Col.1, Col.2, Col.3, Col.4, Col.5, oddments and back to Col.1 and so on.

For my example I would knit 4 rows of Col.1 and 2 rows of Col.2, 1 row of Col.3, 4, & 5 and knit a row of any group of oddments. If you have lots of oddments – Knit 2 rows each time

Cast On 4 Stitches. Slip 1, K 1, YO k to end – on every row. Continue till it is the right size for you. The Cast off row can be a row of oddments or any of the colours still available at the end. There is more finishing if you use a group of yarns to Cast Off but then you are creating a unique piece.

Add a fringe if you wish.

You do not need as many skeins of each yarn as I have suggested – you can have all part skeins, or oddments, variegated yarns, faux fur – absolutely any yarns as long as they knit at about the same gauge. If you have 25 small amounts of yarn and several skeins of black or dark blue or purple or whatever – You can frame sections of many colours with the solid colour that you have a reasonable amount of. In this type of colour design work – what matters most is that the colours together please your eye. It is important to trust your instinct or response when looking at the colours together.

Go for it, knock ‘em dead with your design skills. It is fun.

Danish born, brought up in New Zealand and have been living in the Netherlands since Sept. 2008 because Best Beloved has work here at present.

I have been knitting since the mid 1950’s and began designing my own pieces in my early 20’s. These early designs related to the yarns I could purchase very cheaply from bargain bins and at end of the season – so there was not a big range to choose from for any piece. But buying yarns this way meant I became quite innovative in my colour and yarn use and very early discovered that the required yarn for any pattern is simply to force one to buy that specific yarn and is so absolutely untrue.

Designing and crafting has always been part of my life and I have created pieces using various skills including embroidery, basket weaving, marbling, tie dying fabrics, crocheting, knitting etc.

I love cooking and had an experience which will never be forgotten as a young teenager of 15/16 where I was one of 12 finalists in “Cook of the Year” a New Zealand recipe and cooking competition. This meant I had to be part of a bakeoff – where I cooked my own recipe (the one that I had put forward which placed me in the finals) and a recipe of one of the other finalists. Pretty scary as a young person and of course I drew the recipe of the ultimate winner to be created along with my own recipe.

My “real work” work from the end of the 1970’s was in library systems – first helping put the first library catalogue onto a computer system (data entry, form filling), then working with the Dynix Library System first at Auckland Public Library, then with Dynix itself as a library Support person eventually becoming Manager of Dynix New Zealand. In early 2000 I became the Library Systems Manager at Whangarei District Library where my most interesting project was establishing a Mobile Library Service for the Whangarei District – from buying and outfitting the bus, working out bus routes, and sorting out the technology as well as managing the library system itself.

Now I can barely manage my own computer – especially in this last 18 months with my computer in storage for the first 6 months and using Best Beloved’s work laptop when it was available. Once we were established here with our stuff in a house we did get mine out of storage and I lived and worked with blue screens and crashes for nearly 8 months. I have now replaced it and I do not like my very first laptop, and I hate office 2007 and I hate Vista so far.

I have created / designed many many more pieces than I now can remember and they have gone to many places in the world – from New Zealand to Denmark and England. Now that I have a digital camera – I still manage to complete pieces and not photograph them – but I really do try to photograph everything I create.

Craft / Art Experience:

1973/74 – Cook Street Market – Auckland. I designed and created knit and crochet garments for babies & children, hats & waistcoats of many colours for adults. One passion was multi coloured shawls which I knitted and crocheted. I did also create garments after tie dying the fabrics. I am a lousy sewer but did create hippy style shirts to sell at the market as well. I made many natural cane baskets – banished myself to the bathroom with a bathtub of soaking cane and sat there weaving. Loved the results, hated the process (that is sitting in a cold bathroom – I loved the weaving and creating), and it played havoc with my hands and back.

My mother and I did have a market stall at the Parnell markets where I sold machine knitted sweaters and received my first commisions for fair isle machine knitted sweaters and cardigans – when I had had the machine for only a week or two. Now that was a bit of a leap of faith on part of the purchaser – but it did work out in the end. The knitting machine didn’t last long as a passion as I like knitting whereever I am, in the car, at the dinner table, watching TV (depends on the piece being knitted), at friends and relatives homes everywhere). In fact the knitting machine never really became a passion at all.

1976/78 – Craft group in Titirangi, New Zealand – often at my home where we pooled our knowledge of knitting, crochet, basket weaving as well as the tie dying of fabrics – probably the first “stitch ‘n Bitch” group in New Zealand.

1982/3 – Craft group at Arahoe Primary School – Titirangi, New Zealand. I loved teaching the kids and they were open to trying anything so I did teach various crafts to them including crochet, basket weaving and creating string pictures and more.

1990 – Workshop “Marbling on fabric & paper” with Maxine Lovegrove – Auckland, New Zealand which helped develop my colour use in my beautiful pieces.

In the Netherlands I have added felting, shadow knitting, Hyperbolic planes, and now knitted graffiti to what I do. It is amazing how a new place can encourage you to extend yourself.

I am passionate about colour and texture and uses 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 – and it is magic.

I am delighted when someone is passionate about what I do.

From “About.com”

In its purest form in Western art, an abstract art is one without a recognisable subject, one which doesn’t relate to anything external or try to “look like” something. Instead the colour and form (and often the materials and support) are the subject of the abstract painting. It’s completely non-objective or non-representational.

I think those of us who create in the free form way with techniques such as crochet, knitting are asbstract artists.

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.

 

Affects your family and sometimes your other relationships.

I am a Knitting Nutter (addict), a person who is constantly following people wearing designs that I do not recognise. I stop at boutiques and check out the window displays. I take photographs of garments or stitches or the yarn if I have the camera to help me remember a new idea for something that I just might be able to create some time. I can smell yarn a mile away and I need to touch and smell yarn where ever I am. When I am away from home I actively hunt for a new yarn source to add to my already very substantial yarn stash. I never stop looking, or thinking, or planning, just what I shall create next, or, as well as what I am currently making. I never stop considering buying yet another ball of a yarn or maybe another 2 or another 10.

At one time about 15 or maybe 20 years ago (a hazy memory), I worked out that I had enough yarn to knit at least 50 adult sized sweaters. I was so shocked by the quantity and as at that time I was working full time as well – I didn’t envisage ever using the yarn.

I simply stopped keeping track of my yarn quantity after that as it may have become a personal crisis, I could have gone into a steep decline. I kept up the behaviour of an addict and ignored the growing mountain of yarns. (I have knitted more than 50 unique garments since that time – and I still have a very substantial stash).

My family tolerate the idiosyncracies now – but it was not always so. When our children were younger they learned to sniff out yarn sources and to try to interest me into going in a very different direction. They were as passionate about moving quickly away from the yarn source as I was passionate at locating it.

Some of the mohairs I used then moulted a great deal – so when I was knitting we were all eating bits of mohair fluff as well. I tried keeping it in the freezer, and working in another room with the door closed. I wore knitting clothes and removed them at the door and walked out to those meaningless tasks of cooking, cleaning washing, eating etc that seem to demand attention – the yarn fibres still went with me. They all hated it, they hated what I was doing, or so they said. But if you want a mother and wife – you have to accept what you have even if she is an addict.

Now, if any of my family are in a new country or city – they look for yarns and purchase and send to me what they have found. Morgan has travelled a great deal and as a result he has purchased yarns for me from as far away as Norway and Finland and sent it to me in New Zealand. He and Melissa have given me birthday gifts of boxes of beautiful yarns. They have learned to purchase 1 or 2 balls of 5 or 6 or more different colours of a yarn – so that I can knit with many colours in a new piece. John has purchased yarns in Sydney, Australia for me when he attended courses there for his work. I feel that my very fine madness has rubbed off on them all quite well and they wear the tragedy with great aplomb.

They also will wear my hand knitted creations, which is wonderful.

I have been asked if my family wear my unique designs and when I said yes of course they do – I was asked – “aren’t they embarrassed and uncomfortable wearing all those colours, knitted up without a pattern – the things that you make”? – No of course not, my fine madness now encompasses us all.

It is great.