ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

Read all about it the tree is no longer wearing a fashion scarf

I hope someone takes the scarf and enjoys it as we left it hanging over the tree supports.

It has been fun, we have had a ball – and we are hoping for a return of the great balls of Haarlem, so that the fun can continue. We will keep you posted.

Back to berets, graphs, carbon footprints, bags, jackets, intarsia, e-book and so on. This interlude has been great fun, and we have together had a great deal of fun with it.

I just hope the world of fibre textiles – cottons onto creative textile art installations on spherical objects.

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.

Best Beloved is in Maastricht today armed with my tape measure to enable him to measure a Maastricht ball or maybe two. We had left the tape measure in Haarlem when we tested our white ball warmer a couple of weeks ago. Of course on the day we were there, Best Beloved to work, and me to check out the balls of Maastricht, it was sooo cold, my hands could not have measured a ball accurately at all.

I was excited and maybe just a little horrified as I walked along the road to our rendevous point that bitterly cold day – there were many balls in Maastricht and they were obviously in several sizes. I counted at least 48.

Could there be 48 or so textile and fibre enthusiasts in and around Maastricht who would take up the challenge to create a ball cover for an amazingly different fibre festival event, should we be able organise it. I do hope so.

The measurement of the first ball was phoned in from Maastricht before lunch, and it is only 124cm, at least 36cm smaller than the Haarlem Ball (which was 150 plus my handspan). Less knitting, felting, patchwork, embroidery, crocheting, weaving, basket weaving, textile and fibre work for these balls – so maybe there will be interest from others, just maybe.

Oh no – Measurement been phoned in from Maastricht just before Best Beloved’s 2pm meeting, and the second ball measured across the road from the first, is 142cm and trust me, Best Beloved is not dyslexic.

What is it with these ball creators?

Now we have balls in three sizes and I know there are further balls even smaller in Maastricht. Best Beloved may not be able to measure those on this trip. Generally when work is over it is a race to the next train. The train trip home is 2.5 hours, and I cannot expect more measuring when the journey is so long already. Stopping to measure may mean an additional 1/2 hour between work in Maastricht and home in Haarlem. It wouldn’t be reasonable to expect it. Would it?

I have finally finished the graphs for my Carbon Footprint design. Graph 1 – can be used for intarsia knitting and Graph 2 is a line by line Shadow Knitting opportunity.

It is not that the graphs themselves that have taken so long – I just have too many projects going at one time – and that snowball white Haarlem Ball Warmer keeps on beckoning.

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

I have altered the embroidered design to make the shadow knitting work better. I am knitting the bag, and I have knitted the design itself several times and I have found that it is not essential to work with a solid light and a solid dark yarn to make this work. I have created it with variageted lightish yarn and a black mohair – and it is great.

The bag is being knitted with cream and rusty red coloured cottons. The curiosity of working with shadow knitting – is that it is not always so clear that it is working while you are knitting it. So when I finished the second wall hanging I was pleased to see that it did work (and better than the first) and my carbon footprint certainly exposed itself when viewed on the angle.

Not many carbon footprints in this world are so clear.

I have been mulling over what to do now – and then I checked that WIP list and horrors I still have:

1. IOU’s for 2 pairs of red socks – I will aim for birthdays I think – August and December 2010. Or maybe I will look out for some Peter Blake Lucky red socks on Trade Me instead. BUT that would mean I have still never created a pair of socks. I will have to consider that some more.

2. 2 hats (the slouchy ones I created for Christmas were not quite right for the 12 and 13 year olds), so I am creating more normal beanie hats for the boys – one blue and one green. I started while they were still here – but put it to one side due to an interesting knit art graffiti piece that just took over my activities for a week. Warming the Frozen Balls of Haarlem.

3. I have not looked at the 3 Danish shawls

4. I have finished 2 Moebius scarves – 2 to go.

5. 4 capes to add fastenings etc – the knitting is finished and no ends to do.

6. 1 cardigan to be created / completed, the colours were chosen in April, and I started knitting it then – but it is too stripey in design as per request, and I am not in love with it. I love the colours, I am going to use intarsia or maybe some simple fair isle on this so that it is not a striped cardigan. I am not a good Fair Isle technician – I have very rarely used the technique, so must get over the phobia – so I think it will have to be Fair Isle. Must get it done before April 2010 – as I have had this work in progress for 1 year on 15th April.

BUT I have knitted a scarf for Anna – and you guessed it it has gone and I don’t have a picture. Anna likes dark red – so the scarf is dark red but with short sections of green, brown and even a pink colour all part of the dark red yarn. The yarn was Markoma, Colour 607. I knitted the scarf in k3, p3 rib, without a fringe as Anna is not a fringe person.

I have also created a little cape, poncho or schoncho (schoncho is small poncho for want of a better word). I Used Regia Hand-dye effect yarn (colour 6556) knitted together with a strand of Linie 253 – Hommage in colour 12. Hommage is 76% Kid Mohair. The increases were done using the hyperbolic plane method – that is I increased every 30 stitches on every single row after the neck band. It has great movement, and is light, soft and sexy and quite suitable for a Valentine.

And then there is the pattern and graph for the Carbon Footprint Bag

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.

I am going to write an ebook on my favourite knitting subject – Intarsia. The Intarsia free form process is my passion – but the technicality of working in the round, using a graph, working out the colour scheme etc will all be covered. It will be Intarsia from go to whereever it could take me and of course you. I would hope that my passion for Intarsia knitting might also make a convert of you to this method of colourwork in your knitting.

Would such a book be of interest to you? If so please let me know by emailing me with “I wish to be informed on the progress of the ebook on Intarsia knitting” in the subject field.

Thank you to Cat Bordhi and “A Treasury of Magical Knitting” as today I have begun my first Moebius Scarf using the Moebius Cast on and knitting magically from that. Yes I am knitting from the spine or centre line out and yes I am magically knitting as described in the book.

I have owned this book for about 2 years and I am only now testing the process. What took me so long? It is fun and it is so easy and I am not going to explain the technique. Buy the book or borrow it from your local library.

I shall take this to my Stitch ‘n Bitch group this evening – I am certain that they will have, or some of them will have already created a Moebius Scarf.

Some of us are just slow at picking up new ideas and running with them. My mind is going nuts with how I might use what I have learned today.

We have relocated to Netherlands – following JJ’s work. We arrived at the end of August 2008 and are living in fully furnished apartment which did not have a stash of yarns included – for 6 long months.

Creating pieces without my stash requires some discipline considering that I am used to creating from a stash of many colours and fibres.

Here in the Netherlands I have had to buy some yarns to create with to save my sanity until some of my New Zealand stash is delivered as it will be on Feb 15th 2009.

Standards and Guidelines for Crochet and Knitting

The publishers, fiber, needle and hook manufacturers and yarn members of the Craft Yarn Council of America have worked together to set up a series of guidelines and symbols to bring uniformity to yarn, needle and hook labeling and to patterns, whether they appear in books, magazines, leaflets or on yarn labels. Review this site as you will find it very very useful when working with patterns and using yarns from your stash or yarns that you love but are not the recommended yarn for a pattern you may be trying to work with.

The section Standard Yarn Weight System with categories of yarn and gauge ranges, along with the recommended needle and hook sizes is particularly useful to me as I use yarns from everywhere in the world where the opportunity to purchase something interesting comes up. I also try to read and understand patterns and yarn types from all over Europe (including Denmark, The Netherlands and Germany), USA, Great Britain and New Zealand.

It is a daft thing but even though I very very rarely knit from a specific pattern – I have managed to purchase patterns in Dutch, Danish and German. Why – I don’t know.