ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

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.

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.

Now maths is a mystery to me.

When I discovered the crocheted Hyperbolic Plane and looked at a sites where crochet has been used to create the hyperbolic plane, I found this paper Crocheting the Hyperbolic Plane updated version is published in Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 17-28, Spring 2001 .

It is said one cannot use knitting to create a Hyperbolic Plane as it is not rigid enough. Well that works for me because I don’t want to create a Hyperbolic Plane I just want to play with my yarn.

To create a knitted or crocheted Hyperbolic Plane you must create your piece with your stitch increases one row to the next occuring in a constant ratio and that ratio determines the radius of the hyperbolic plane.

I thought that is fine – but I don’t want to create the mathematical tool the Hyperbolic Plane – but what would happen if I knitted a scarf starting with a circle on a circular needle and increasing the stitches at a constant rate on every row. Generally when one increases in knitting or crochet the increases occur at a given interval to create a specific shape – a triangle, a bell, and so on. But the increases are not every 20 stitches or whatever increase range you decide on -they are usually on every second row and the increases form a part of the pattern.

I used a 4 ply (sock weight yarn) varigated yarn and created my stitch increases with Yarn Overs and of course because the increases are constant the Yarn Overs do not create a pattern. I placed markers every 50 stitches and moved them along on every row as I knitted to keep track of the numbers. Unfortunately when I was heading for the cast off row – which related to the number of stitches that I could manage on my circular needle, I was also knitting and talking to my husband and so I did not count the stitches as I cast off but I think I was well over 2000 in the number of stitches. I can probably work it out from the number of rows etc – but I don’t much like that math stuff – so I will have to do it again and with a longer circular needle – and then record properly the numbers and besides that will be more fun – creating another one – and this knitting is all about having fun.

The result looks like a fungus growing on the bark of a very old cherry tree in our garden in New Zealand, or it could look like some very sensitve soft seaweed which moves underwater with the movement of the waves.

I don’t mind and you can judge for yourself.