ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

Our very local yarn shop has just been sold. My Dutch language is not very good – so I don’t know yet if that means that the business has been sold and it will still be a yarn shop, or if means that the shop only has been sold, which means there will not be any yarns available within 500 metres of where I live. And those yarns in the little shop are all reduced in price, and some reduced very heavily indeed. It makes my pulse race the thought of lovely yarns at reduced prices. What to do?

Of course I have been in there looking at the yarns, (only at the ones at reduced prices of course), and trying so hard to justify buying some more yarn. Why!!!!

I have so much yarn already.

But then “Is it possible to ever ever have sufficient yarn?” I don’t know the answer to that question, do you?

But there is an event coming up, a huge national celebration all over the Netherlands – Queens Day Koninginnedag the biggest, most orange party you could ever ever imagine.

But, back to the yarn – they had orange yarn (now that is such a coincidence), acrylic yarn, entirely suitable for a yarn bombing, urban art, graffiti art knit, knit art graffiti, guerilla art, you name it – this orange yarn is so suitable for a piece or two for Queen’s Day.

I do not usually have very much Orange yarn in my collection, nor do I usually have very much acrylic yarn in my collection. Now I have both of those and it is only 19 days to Queen’s Day.

I have an orange hat to wear to the party, but I might also have a little orange knitting to install somewhere as well. I’ll let you know.

This little post will be so brief that you just might miss it.

There will not be a creative knitted / designer covering placed on a ball in Maastricht tomorrow – April 1st, April Fool’s Day. Unfortunately creating and knitting a sphere – with a logo – is much more difficult that estimated and the installation is postponed.

It will happen – I have the yarn, the spherical object, and its size. I have the will, I can knit and I will find the way to make that logo look right – which right now it simply does not.

If all else fails it will be knitted in the company colours without the logo. It will not be as effective without the logo but if it has be then it has to be.

Hope that does not happen.

Will keep you posted.

This is a link to an interesting list of April Fool’s Day hoaxes. This is not because mine is a hoax, it was fully my intent to install on April 1st – too much work, too little time and the complexity of adding a logo on a spherical piece of knitting just got in the way of completing the piece.

The balls are back like rows of Bridesmaids awaiting to move forward in the church.

They will look grand back in position. Trouble is, and I do not know if this is trouble yet, there were 24 balls (not the 25 I originally stated), now there are 20 waiting. I do hope the evenly spaced balls will look as grand on this elegant curve if there are only 20. It could also be that when I go back today that another 4 will have materialised.

A Yarnbombing, A Graffiti Art Knit installation, or an Urban Art installation will occur here again I am sure. I do hope the powers that be in Haarlem will let them sit and rest a little before removing them next time.

Look at the people not looking at us. How many people went by without so much as a glance sideways. Did they watch from across the square? Were they embarrassed at the sight of two oldies playing with large cold stone balls? Did they wonder what we were up to? Did they speed up on their bikes – so they didn’t have to consider properly what they were seeing? Do they wear blinkers here in Haarlem?

The white ball warmer did fit the Haarlem ball well and it was clearly too large for the Maastricht Ball that we tried it on on Wednesday. So I do know for certain now that this ball here in Haarlem is 160cm round.

The black ball cover is not finished yet, but as Best Beloved said it was still at an embryonic stage.

We will need to install these two in daylight because our little camera and the poor light will make it impossible to see the black ball warmer when it is done if we repeated this at night in the Grote Markt.

When these are done and dusted – installed they will be the Black & White Ball Show

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.