ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

Berets not including the felted one – because I have not felted it as yet.

Also Berets not including my funky fuzzy, multicoloured one – I haven’t knitted it as yet. Sorry Jeanette – at least it is still summer time where you are in Australia. And this morning we got up to another surprisingly white day – a reasonable sprinkling of snow. It is disappearing fast as the day warms up.

Cool Berets, Gorgeous Colours

There will be a pattern for these Berets using Vero, or another 12ply yarn.

And for you knitters out there – the front beret has been blocked, the back two had not been blocked when the photograph was taken. They are drying now.

I am now on beret six – there is some minor madness when one keeps on playing with a piece. These have all been created using Vero yarn but in the different colours that I have here in the Netherlands.

I do miss my yarns that are still in New Zealand.

How can I miss yarn? I cannot even remember what was in my stash there – just that there were lots of yarns, in lots and lots of colours, from many different places in the world. But I do miss the variety in colour, yarn type, do not have sufficient variety here to create pieces as I was doing in New Zealand. I have purchased a lot of different yarns here in the Netherlands and some in Switzerland and in Denmark – I just do not have the quantity, colour range and yarn types here as I did have at home. It takes time to build up a new stash, doesn’t it?

What to do?

I don’t know.

So right now I am knitting berets.

Originally this was in response to a commission from a friend in Australia. But now I need to consider – do I continue with these? Do I complete the commission? Well yes that I must do, which means that beret 7 must be a funky, fuzzy, multicoloured piece. Then I must write up the pattern and then get back to that carbon footprint bag. Maybe I just put the two graphs out, one for the intarsia footprints and the other for carbon footprint using shadow knitting and leave you to decide – should it be on a bag, blanket, pram cover, cushion or on a sweater – should you happen to want a sweater with a foot print or two on it.

I guess that is what should be done.

The beret pattern – will include one in stocking stitch, and one felted from a stocking stitch knit. I won’t try to define the multicolour, multi fibre, intarsia one – that will be free form with little guidance.

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.

 

Options : With many yarns and colours of course

One beret created with faux fur fibres in gorgeous shades (to be decided on), with a plain wool knitted band. “A Crazy Soft Character top – and simple band”

The other should be a felted one in the wonderful turquoise, deep blue, purple delicious colour range with fancy bits included to make a dramatic statement. I don’t have a pattern for either – but will work from the two I have already created.

Remember many yarns and many colours

My brain (or is it my eyes), is seeing balls everywhere – so I have to concentrate on something sensible like my carbon footprint bag pattern and your two berets and I am glad that you like them both – and that you will go for colour explosions in both with the felted one in a variety of yarns in those rich purples, turquoises and blues.

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.

In 1974 or 75 my mother and I had a 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 and I gave it away to a friend in the 1980s.

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.

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.

Shadow Knitting is something I have often thought about working with but had never quite got to trying it out. I didn’t want to create pictures as such, but would like to see how I could explore its use as an art form.

I had the opportunity to put forward a proposal for an art piece to the International Textile Exhibition being held in the Netherlands in 2010. The theme is “Sporen” or “Tracks” – I have taken the view that what we will leave behind will be plastic, lots of plastic; or the current hotspot, The Carbon Footprint. They didn’t get excited about the piece I created but it was an interesting experiment with shadow knitting and I am going to continue working with it. I can see such creative and artistic opportunities.

On the way to my “Carbon Footprint” art piece I created several small wall hangings to fit into the 20″ by 20″ frame as required for the exhibition. The first was a knitted scene – which I then felted. I like it well enough, but not enough to put it forward. Yes I could have embellished it and I will probably do that sometime.

My next piece was to include plastic, as my view of the world is that we will all finally be buried under a mountain of plastic. I roughly cut various plastic bags into strips, nothing too tidy as plastic is not tidy. I also visited a very dim “rabbit warren” of a junk shop here in Haarlem and came out with many odd plastic things – stuff that had been created as advertising gimmicks – key rings, swizzle sticks, some toy bits etc which I was going to include in my knitted Everest. It is pure rubbish for which I paid an exorbitant amount of money. It was stuff that should never have been created and had been doomed to linger on the very dusty shelves of a large, dim, untidy, disorganised junk shop until the crazy knitter rolled in. Of course if I had used it – maybe I would have had to go back and find some more. My hands were rather blackish and grubby when I emerged and it was not that good for my lungs either. I did knit my 20″ by 20″ Everest – of plastic using the shadow knitting technique. I like it, but it didn’t quite demonstrate what I had hoped and time was running out – and by then my best beloved had suggested “The Carbon Footprint”. I think Everest is the beginnings of a much larger piece, 20″ by 20″ was too small for my Everest.

I purchased a digitally restored eBook which included the pattern for a crocheted bathmat with a chart to embroider a footprint on the crocheted bathmat. This pattern was originally published by The American Thread Company, Star Rug Book No. 93, in 1952.

I redesigned the chart for a knitted foot print after I had tried and failed with the chart as it was. The re-engineered footprint was then knitted in black mohair, with the background of a natural coloured varigated sock yarn and finished with a black crochet edge. It was not deemed suitable for the exhibition BUT it has set me off in a new direction and I had thought I would only ever create with many, many colours and fibres and that I would use the intarsia method of knitting till I slip this mortal coil. Not so – I am learning so many more knitting techniques here in the Netherlands.

I think of that and wonder why that could be and the only conclusion I can come to is that in New Zealand there are many things happening around me and I am easily led from my work.

Here there is only me, this little house, my yarn, my best beloved is at work, I shop for groceries, walk the canals, watch the birds, ride my bike (not alone you understand – we go out on the bikes together), out on the polders and to the North sea, visit museums and galleries – there is really nothing to interfere with the creative process – so I am more creative.

I don’t know.

Shadow knitting – a technique of knitting alternating rows of dark and light yarn to produce a subtle patterning that appears and disappears depending on the angle from which it is viewed. The shadow knitting queen is Vivian Hoxbro.

WoolOn Press Release.

Now that put the pressure on. I was in New Zealand on holiday for a month thinking I had plenty of time – but as it happens I didn’t really have plenty of time. I started to knit the jacket in the Netherlands on my return on the 7th of August and had to complete it and post it by the 24th August – which I did – and then we were off on a 2 week trip to Denmark to spend time with my Danish family and to introduce John to Denmark.

My felting yarn was mostly New Zealand – Naturally Vero varigated 100% wool yarn with various artifical fibres and I created a huge jacket. Then I very nervously placed it in the washing machine and felted it.

It seems to have worked – the jacket for a giant became a jacket for a normal person and was then sent to New Zealand and arrived in time for the WoolOn event.

I knitted the jacket in garter stitch from cuff to cuff. It has wide almost kimono style sleeves and a V front with 2 buttons at mid chest.

The risky part was working out the ratio of natural wool (Naturally Vero mostly) to artifical fibres which would not felt. I did create a number of small rectangles of yarns – with the felting yarn mixed with the non felting yarns – to work out the shrinkage % and to see how the fur fibres sat next to the felted 100 % yarns. I am quite happy with the result of my first ever felted piece and will do more.

John did remind me a few times that it is not a good idea to create something for an exhibition where the technique has not been well practised first. HMMMM – maybe – but then maybe I would never try something new, would I? Spoilsport.

One can do wonders with an extensive stash of yarns. I do not an extensive stash here in the Netherlands, although I am trying to fix that situation. Some of my yarn from New Zealand has founds its way to me and I have been able to purchase new yarns that have never been available to me except over the net.

So some of the stuff I am creating is a bit different – I am making pieces for a colder climate, pieces that are safe as well as gorgeous to wear when cycling (seeing as I am in the Netherlands), and a dress and a felted Jacket for exhibition in New Zealand. I have also been playing with the Hyperbolic Plane – increases in a scarf, as well working on the Moebius scarf and the Magic Cast On.

 

I have planned to knit a very large jacket for the WoolOn Fashion Parade in New Zealand. Of course I am doing something I have never deliberately done before – creating a felted jacket.

I am planning on using Naturally Vero 100% wool yarns from New Zealand to be felted along with long sections of various faux fur fibres.

To do this and be certain that the resulting knitting will felt to a wearable size and the faux fur yarns were not to overwhelm the piece I had to knit sample pieces of a reasonable size and then felt them. The usual swatch size is not sufficient to test such a process for a large garment. Prior to the felting I measured each piece and then measured again to see the percentage of shrinkage with the felting process.

I did knit 3 sample pieces which I subsequently felted to test the process. Some sections were knitted in garter stitch, some in Stocking stitch and some areas were ribbed and shaped. Each piece was measured and then inserted in a zip up bag and felted in the washing machine. I didn’t add any washing soap or detergent to the water. I did keep checking the pieces and did not allow the machine to go into a rinse or spin cycle.

I set the machine for the lowest water level and the highest temperature and then watched/checked the process a lot. The machine I used heats the water – so one piece I added while the machine was filling. Not a good option I ended up adding very hot water using the electric jug to heat it as the felting process just didn’t start to happen and I am impatient. The other two pieces I added to the machine when the water was very hot.

The pieces were each contained in a zip up pillowcase hoping that would also contain any excess fibre that would be not good for the machine pump and it did work well.

This was an essential step when creating the jacket – as it is nigh impossible to safely remove a huge piece of felted knitting heavy with hot hot water out of a machine safely. The huge Duvet cover/bag we used was essential to get the piece out of the machine.

When my sample pieces were dry I rechecked the measurements and from that I extrapolated the size requirement for my jacket and then the stitches needed to meet the size and hoped the end result would be a wearable jacket.