ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

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.

This piece was created as a challenge to me as I have not created a garment using only one brand of yarn before, let alone alpaca for many years. My philosophy has been to add another colour and then another type of yarn and then if it is looking great then add some more. I just cannot get enough colour and texture.

I had intended to create a piece for evening wear including a cape as well as a knitted silver wire neckpiece which would also incorporate the yarn. But then I didn’t plan on buying yarn on the internet – to satisfy the requirements for NZ alpaca for the New Zealand Alpaca Expo. I had no idea of the quality of the yarn, nor whether I liked the colours, or if indeed the yarns I had brought with me would work with the Alpaca. There was no problem, the yarn is beautiful, lovely to handle and to work with.

Thank you to the lovely people at Flagstaff Alpacas for making certain that the yarn was at my daughters when I arrived in New Zealand. The first thing I did with the yarn was to enjoy it – that is touch it, smell it, and feel it against my face – I lay it out on the bed with all the yarns I had bought with me to use in this dress. I played with them, stared at them, looked at them in the sun and inside – the design then created itself without any of the yarns that I had brought with me.

The design had to show the wonderful yarn, and present the soft elegant shades created by Doe Arnot for Flagstaff Alpacas. The dress was knitted in one piece from the hemline on a circular needle.

It was divided at the increases for the sleeves and again at the deep V point. At various crucial stages it was tried on by my daughter – to help me decide where to decrease for the waist, increase for the sleeves and divide the neck into that deep V and so on. She is a very patient young women, thank goodness.

I hope you enjoy it as well.

The dress has a ribbed skirt section, fitted to waist (very fitting), with bat wing sleeves and a very deep V neck. It has been created in one piece from the hem line of the skirt and is worked in the round. The increases for the sleeves began above the waist and the front and backs were worked at the same time once the deep V for the neckline was commenced.
One side of the bodice and the sleeve was worked in black and the other side in the wonderful varigated yarns.

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.

Excerpt from Leader newspaper

Mardi Gras, colour and the hidden is the focus of The Yvonne Rust Gallery’s Gumbo Ya Ya (a bit of everything) exhibition on now.
Melanie FerDon, Trina Garratt and Connie Johnston curate the multimedia exhibition.
Melanie FerDon is American-born, but has been in New Zealand since 1982 and is now in her final year of a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Whitecliffe College of Art and Design. She is a contemporary painter of human figures in dark, rich colours on large canvases.

Danish-born artist Connie Johnston is a textile-wearable artist working mainly with natural fibres. Over the past 30 years she has had her designs, which have been included in many exhibitions and competitions, selling worldwide.

Trina Garratt is New Zealand-born and has studied at the Cut Above Academy, where she specialised in special effects make-up, and Whitecliffe College of Art and Design, where she has also exhibited. She has been the special effects artist for the Auckland War Memorial Museum for the “Whodunnit” exhibition as well as numerous short films and the popular television series Xena Warrior Princess.

There are three large paintings, four sculptures, and eight sweaters and a magnificent cloak in the exhibition which runs until Thursday.

Newspaper Cutting

This gallery highlights a small selection of unique designs created prior to 2000. They have been created for various exhibitions or as individual commissions.