ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

In case you want to check out how it looked at night when the balls were there.

The websites are back up – thank goodness.

I will upload the photographs we took in the rain today. That is the photographs of the Grote Markt (Town Square) of Haarlem in the rain, and no balls for the ball warmers to warm, or to protect from the rain. Hope the photos are okay as it was a dreadful day here.

If you should know where the great balls of Haarlem are please let me know – as you can’t take it (the knowledge) with you.

I have had an offer from Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, to send one of the Wellington balls to me here in Haarlem. Should these balls be the same size as the Haarlem Balls – I think I should probably send a Ball Warmer or two to Wellington for them instead. The balls are too heavy to send across the world. Nice thought though, bringing a Wellington Ball to Haarlem.

Someone out there has my first ball warmer – here are the photographs.

Help! They are gone !

Who took the Haarlem Balls?

Those elegant balls in the most gorgeous town square (Grote Markt) we have been in. Those gorgeous balls that were used to sit on and talk to your buddies in the summer.

Those elegant balls on an elegant curve delineating the road from the square.

Those balls that were so right in a town square of such age, beauty and elegance. No other shape, or style of divider could ever do in that space.

And then of course there are the Ball Warmers themselves, so far none of the measured balls in Maastricht or the loosely measured balls in California match the size of these Haarlem Balls.

So my knitting pattern suggestion will never have another use.

The snow ball and the formal ball gown – will not have a place where they can be proudly displayed.

Why oh why has this happened?????

Is it because I cannot read sufficient Dutch to have known they were to be removed?

Or is it because the newspapers that I can manage to read some of, were not delivered?

I could have installed the Ball Warmers – even for a brief time. These Ball warmers will never be seen in all their glory. People using the square will not be able to smile at the silliness, or the surprise, or the delight of great concrete balls with covers; knitted art designer covers.

Right now I am so shattered, and as I didn’t take my camera with me today – I do not have a photograph of the square without balls.

I will add photos of the square without the balls later maybe, when I have the strength to return. Maybe, just maybe, they will be put back before I can return there.

And this will just have been a nightmare.

If you found the lost Haarlem Ball Warmer – what could you use it for?

First you would discover that I didn’t finish all the ends properly – sorry. That was because I was really excited or nuts. So finish the ends first.

then consider the following options:

1. Cover ball 13 (the original chosen ball)
2. Hat – for big hair
3. Cape for a small person (fold in half – place over/around the shoulders, pin
4. Add handles – BIG shopping bag
5. Nest liner – for a big big bird (stork or Grey heron – You will need help to get up the tree)
6. Cut it in two around the middle – make the top half into a bag by adding I-cord handles, and the bottom half into a hat by stitching together the cut edge.
7. same as 6 – but knit an edge around it – decreasing the stitches on each row so that it will fit around your head , to make one huge slouchy hat. Felt the other half – and see just how good it will be as a beret. I am not sure that all the yarns will felt – so it will be a really artistic beret.
8. Cut a hole in the top – crochet around the top edge – a skirt. The bottom edge is needs finishing as well – it has a thread through each stitch – so some work there as well – sorry.
9. Cut armholes and neck hole and crochet around the edges of these – dress for small person.
10. Unravel – knit a new ball warmer – using the intarsia technique
11. Unravel – knit a baby blanket
12. or cot cover
13. or pram cover
14. or childs sweater
15 Dog kennel liner
16 Cat bed
17 Knee Rug
18 Find a thick tree trunk and attach the ball warmer
19 Fill it with lots beans – sew together the bottom edge, voila a child’s bean bag. It might be sensible to make a bag for the beans first – or they could leak out.
20 Make a fat cushion
21. Fill it with little balls – ball toy for large large cat
22. Felt it – stretch it into a pleasing organic shape – embellish it and you have created a wall hanging

To be continued, brain is tired now, going to bed.

Maybe there will not be 100 ways to use a stolen ball warmer

Thank you to Sara of HotHive Textiles for the Article published on the HotHive Textile Directory on 28/01/2010.

See Hothive Textiles for interesting textile information and opportunities.

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.

What a nice group of people – sitting in a dark corner of the cafe hunched over their knitting and talking about who knows what – all double dutch to me. But then they are Dutch – so what could I expect.

They were lovely – they all speak English, at one level or another, and one of the group is English and has lived in the Netherlands for 35 years. And they knit the most amazingly beautiful things. They create beautiful fair isle knits -with tiny needles and thin yarns and delicious and beautiful colours. I am so in awe of their skills and patience to knit such beautiful time consuming pieces – shawls, socks, baby garments etc.

And they didn’t laugh at how I knit – which is really great. I thought they might knit the way I do as I understood from my teachers (my mother, and 2 aunts), that my way is the Continental way – or European way or perhaps the Scandinavian way. The group mostly seem to knit more like the English way I saw in New Zealand.

But they really are sitting in a poorly lit corner of the cafe – and there is lots of talking, and it could be bitching, I don’t know. I came away feeling really tired from trying to follow the conversation. I do have some hope because I do understand knitting, but my Dutch language is pretty hopeless.

I will go back – as just maybe this will encourage me into fair isle knitting and to creating socks and gloves etc using double pointed needles. I have only once knitted with DPN’s – my fingerless gloves.

So I may become a more capable knitter because these ladies have set a challenge – their work is fine and beautiful and I should explore the techniques and just maybe I will understand more Dutch before I return to New Zealand and that would be a bonus.

I do have a very large stash of yarns some of which is in New Zealand – and I am going back to New Zealand for a holiday – and to create a piece for the Alpaca Expo 2009 and maybe to begin my piece for WoolOn at the the Alexandra Blossom Festival.

Each piece I create is unique – that is even if the style is repeatable – the way I use the yarns within any piece is not. I work from an overview idea maybe of colours, or fibres or an idea or picture that arrives as I am knitting. I may begin with a concept which alters as I go as the yarns can speak for themselves.

These two events have caused me to pause and focus on the design process prior to picking up the needles as the yarns required are New Zealand Alpaca and New Zealand wool. I have found a great source of New Zealand Alpaca and I know that my yarn will be waiting when I arrive in NZ. I found just what I wanted at Wonderful Alpacas and they have been very helpful in making certain that I will have the yarn I need as soon as I arrive.

I am focusing on the Fashion Parade for the Alpaca piece and maybe the Special Occasion section for the WoolOn creative Fashion event.

I have sufficient New Zealand wool to begin my WoolOn piece here in the Netherlands before I leave and complete it on my return. I am experimenting with felting my knits so it may be that I will create a felted piece.

I am leaving the summer of the Netherlands for the cold damp miserable winter in New Zealand – the bonus is that I am also going to spend a great deal of time with my wonderful daughter and that special grandson of mine.

I have struggled with my creations since I arrived in the Netherlands and apart from the lack of a huge range of yarns I have not had a “body” to test shapes and flow of any of the pieces I have been working on. In New Zealand I had access to a torso as well as my daughter who has been a very patient model all her life.

Today I have fixed that – I purchased not one but two torso’s from a 2nd hand clothing shop which is closing down here in Haarlem.

One – all black with minimal facial features and no arm sections – and the headless wonder but with the upper arms. The purples triangular (but not Danish shawl style) scarf/shawl on my black model is now completed and has gone to Natasha.

I carried the grey torso with upper arms, under my arm, I took the head off the black one and put torso into my trolley upside down and the head rested inside the body – sort of and then proceeded home with them. I tried not to check too hard – but I think some tourists may have taken photos of me marching across the Grote Markt (big square) with my unusal purchases.

I can understand the desire to photograph such sights. I have twice seen a lady riding her bicycle with a mannequin leg in each of her saddle bags. So looking at her from behind there are 2 legs in the air and a body and head facing the other way between them. Do I ever see her when I have my camera out – Nooooo way. Darn.

I have been working in a very foreign way for me – here in the Netherlands.

My design process is usually more or less as outlined below.

I play with my yarns – and that includes touching it and smelling it, and moving it from one pile to another to see which colours sing for me and then I decide what I could make with the resulting group of yarns. There have been many times when I have had a large sheet on the floor covered in piles of yarn which I may “play” with for some weeks before I begin to knit. I have a patient family, thank goodness.

I have decided to create a piece – and I look for the yarns (playing, smelling, touching as above) until something tells me these that I have gathered together will create my vision and then I start the knitting and if I remember in my excitement to do so, I record the pattern as I am knitting it.

OR

I have been asked to create a piece in a particular colour range or yarn type, or specific pattern/style for a person who has their own personal shape, colouring and style in mind for which I am to create a unique piece. That option is more difficult and requires much discussion and ideas back and forth till a consensus is reached and I use some or all of the above to create a unique piece for a unique person.

BUT

Here in the Netherlands I have been working for many months without a stash of yarns and it has forced me to me more formal in my process and I have been knitting pieces of one yarn only (my heart is breaking), and not just one yarn type but one yarn colour. (Can you feel my heart crying). Now to make this valid for me I have even forced myself to put proposals forward to magazines etc thinking that maybe others will like my more formal work. Formal in that there a design requirement, a yarn to be decided on and a style to envisage and then a pattern to be created and checked and tested and sometimes the garment to be knitted. My pieces are still unique in that they are still a bit quirky in shape or style I hope, but it is a formal process being tested. Will it work I wonder?

BUT my blood pressure has gone up

SO I am reverting to the more passionate form of designing – I am going back, or forward depending on your point of view to creating unique pieces with passion, colour, surprise, uniqueness. Pieces that spark a passion in others, pieces that make people want to stroke them to feel the yarns, and even to looking closely to see just how many different yarns, how many different colours and how they work together.

Most of you will not know about our glorious “K” Road (Karangahape Road, Auckland, New Zealand). I used to work in a little street off the notorious “K” Road. One day when I was walking along on my way to work (as a systems consultant for libraries – believe it or not) wearing one of my multi coloured mohair batwing sweaters. A couple of very tall masculine women in very short skirts spoke to me as they tottered by in their very high heels. “Love your sweater darling”. I loved it – it made my day.

I want that to happen every day.