ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

I have been talking, or is that writing, a bit lately about direction on a personal level with various friends, family and colleagues. But I still feel a touch confused.

But I shouldn’t be!

I am communicating like crazy.

Or is that crazily communicating.

Or should it be that I am crazy to communicate

Or what else could it mean?

I am on Facebook and Twitter, and have two etsy shops Unique Boutique Knits where you will find my patterns and some odd knits and bits. Then I have an etsy shop called ConnieLene where you will only find knits and that might be only for a wee while. This one is for the chop as it were.

Then I am on Youtube and as I am sure you have worked out already I am Connieleneknits The videos are of my (our graffiti) knitting exploits as well as bird life and bike travels etc in the Netherlands.

Crazy as it all seems I am also on the Big Idea but there I am ConnieLene Johnston and then there are other places in the world like LinkedIn, Digg as Connieleneknits, Ravelry as ConnieLene, GrownUpsNZ, my mobile for SMS, email, etc – there are too many places that I cannot list for time becomes an issue here.

All these internet connections are so that I can communicate with absolutely anyone who could be interested in me personally, and/or in my work, or in my travels with Best Beloved.

Life goes in full Circles!

Yes it does.

The very first connection I had with the world was with my mother and then with my family and communciation was snail mail, then the telephone other than real live real functional talking. You know that stuff – face to face. Fantastic stuff.

Life, work, marriage, children, illness, death, birth ……..

And we have forgotten to talk.

Oh we do communicate – but talk, what’s that!

Now we communicate via the ether.

I remember ether – it is what I used as a young nurse in an old coackroach ridden hospital ward in Auckland – to stun huge coackroaches into submission to be scooped up and washed down the sluice. I could still hear the scuttling of those other 10 million coackroaches but I did my bit with the ether.

Now I do so much with the ether – that I think everything has come full circle again. I feel like there are another 10 million connections that I am not making in this modern ether.

It is a little scary so.

Right now I just want family and friends and colleagues and fantastic face to face talking for a bit.

Maybe I have been alone here in the Netherlands too long. Maybe it is because I have been recently to New Zealand where we did lots of talking. Maybe it is because my sister has terminal cancer. Maybe it is because my sister is to be married this weekend, maybe it is just that I am not there.

I know, I am not alone – Best Beloved is here. He leaves for his work at around 7.30 in the mornings. I am not sure of the time – he brings me a wonderful coffee up two flights of stairs and then goes to work. He comes home again around 5.30 or 6 generally. I might go to the shops and the rest of the time I am alone.

Gosh I think I am having words with me.

Get up – get out there, only another 12 months and then who knows what we might get up to then – and I have at least enough yarn for another 50 sweaters, not that I will knit sweaters, and I am going to the Knitting and Stitch show in London. Then I will talk, I hope I will be talking a lot.

I am so looking forward to talking.

I will still communicate via the ether, but I am not going to try to make another 10 million ether connections.

Only Thursday evening last I told Best Beloved that the 2 Etsy shops were a little difficult to maintain. That I would now continue creating patterns and sell them from Unique Boutique Knits as I do now, and I would stop trying to create new “One of a Kind” pieces for my other Etsy shop Connie Lene Designer Knits

Funky Fingerless Glove Pattern link

The reason being, I said – that when I create my OOAK (One of a Kind) pieces I really enjoy the challenge of doing that for specific exhibitions, commissions, fashion events and so on. Trying to maintain those connections as well as 2 etsy shops to sell OOAK pieces as well as my patterns – is just too much for me right now. So I want to concentrate better on my OOAK artistic creations.

OK, said Best Beloved, you do what you love.

He is a special man this Best Beloved – having supported me through a number of special creations for various exhibitions and he knows the stresses and lives them with me. That is he, our daughter and son, as well as several very supportive and creative artists in New Zealand.

What happened then?

Well yesterday (Friday) I sold 2 capes from ConnieLene Knits as well as a sweet little poncho and 2 patterns from Unique Boutique Knits. My very very best Etsy day ever.

SO WHAT SHALL I DO NOW??

I hope that after looking through the site you will choose to be a fan of my Facebook Page or as it is now on facebook I hope you will choose to like ConnieLeneKnits

You can find me in many places on the net –

My Etsy Shop Unique Boutique Knits for patterns and garments

Crazy but this is my other Etsy Shop Connielene Capes and my unique and unrepeatable knits Capes because I adore cloaks and capes, the others because I cannot tell you exactly how I created them other than the pattern for the style but not the intarsia on them.

And because I managed to create and install a Ball Warmer and really enjoyed the experience and the story World Urban Art – a site still in development – Installation art in the urban environment including Knit Art Graffiti or Yarn bombing.

Our travels in Europe – two oldies from New Zealand exploring the Netherlands, Denmark and Europe as time, money and energy allows.

You can find me on Ravelry here and believe it or not I am also on Twitter here as Connieleneknits

I am a Freelance designer, knitter, lover of colour; lots of colour, Intarsia lover, pattern writer, fashion knit trend follower, Colour and yarn trend follower.

They tell me that I am also artist, graffiti knit artist. I know I am a storyteller, writer, blogger, mother, wife, sister, grandmother, teacher, friend, photographer, and speaker.

My loves are colour, texture, shape, flow, drape, drama, magic, passion and yarn and I hope you enjoy the results.

When I can I do participate in fibre exhibitions, and I have curated two exhibitions with a wonderful artist friend. In 2009 I had a felted jacket in WoolOn at the Alexandra Blossom Festival, and a dress with intarsia of course in the Alpaca Festival in New Zealand.

My Mission is to excite and challenge all knitters, designers and wearers of hand created pieces – to experience more colour in their own knitted pieces and to enjoy the freedom and the magic of wearing such a unique piece because it is created with many colours, passion and with magical yarns

My Major Project with delivery in 2011 is My Intarsia Knitting – Book as yet with no name.

I hope you will be a fan of my Facebook Page or as it is now I hope you will choose to like ConnieLeneKnits on Facebook.

Most of my creations are individually designed, created, and knitted and are unique and I hope they are also magic for the owner and wearer. Much of the colour work within the piece is created on the needles by the freeform Intarsia method and I generally do not work from a graph or even a picture, just from an idea or concept.

Each piece being individually designed and created using many, many colours of various fibres in the free form process and as my passion is for depth and variety of colour and texture I cannot repeat any free form design knitted within the formal constraints of a specific garment.

I can and do recreate the shape and style of an individual piece as long as I did not get so excited by the process that I didn’t record what I was doing at the time. I have been known to create a piece and deliver it and not even take a photograph let alone write down just what I did to create the shape. I am trying to not do that any more. It is not so bad should one still have the piece for I can and sometimes have worked from the completed piece to a pattern.

I always hope that the end result will inspire, delight and reflect a joy and passion for colour in the wearer.

Usually my work is created with natural fibres in many colours – wool, silk, cotton, linen, alpaca, and mohair, and now with the new modern yarns like bamboo. I also include modern artifical fibres, including faux fur yarns and also beads to further enhance the piece.

Some of my work is more formal and structured and can be repeated and may be available as a pattern. From time to time you will discover a free pattern here and I hope you will enjoy knitting my creations. I am selling patterns from an etsy shop uniqueboutiqueknits and I will begin to load patterns onto Ravelry.

For an individual design please use the contact form to email me.

I have finally established my presence at “The Place to buy and sell all things handmade” ETSY.

Well it is not exactly a presence yet. I have managed to add 4 items to each shop and to set up a basic environment. It is amazing what has to be done to establish a great cyberspace presence. It will take me a bit of time to get my head around the process.

See Connielene and Unique Boutique

The very silly reason for 2 ETSY shops is that I didn’t read all the detail properly, well I didn’t absorb all the detail properly and added Unique Boutique before realising that my user name was also my shop name. So I will see how two Etsy shops go and decide later whether it is worth the effort or not.

My aim with Connielene is to include those pieces which are unique – these pieces will generally use many, many different colours; many, many different fibres and should be exciting and magic to wear. They will also be impossible to ever repeat. They will be the pieces that could be in exhibitions.

I will also include my edgy fashion pieces like my NOT fox fur capelet. These I can repeat, and do, and they have become an important part of my collection.

In Unique Boutique I will include the things I create with only one or two yarns and/or colours and are quite simple – but each will still be unique – as I do not usually purchase enough yarn to repeat exactly any piece.

I will also include my shadow knitted wall hangings and new felted pieces in the ConnieLene shop.