ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

But I have started a project – The Family Tree – trying to find my extensive family from all over the world. We are so widespread – over Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands and the USA, and there may be other places to add where the family has or is still – such as a hint of link to France and there are some who may have gone to Sweden. Who knows what we will find out there.

I am still knitting – but the family tree has become a little obsessive – so this little post is to get me back on track.

So as I am looking at Danish things on the internet, that is the family connections and so on – What shall I do about my knitting – that is the question? I need to complete the knit projects that are on the needles – before I fly to New Zealand for a month very soon – like within 7 days even. Don’t I?

Well I could add some hints to things Danish in my knitting, like my Danish Shawls – to pull me back, to refocus me, couldn’t I?

And I could also list what needs to be done in the knitting part of my life again. I could, couldn’t I.

The trouble is the list is too long just now. Maybe I will have to take my knit obsession with me to New Zealand as well.

Now that could work.

I am creating a neck warmer to go with the blues, nearly striped, nearly intarsia, beret for my dear friend Jeanette. Not a scarf, but a neck warmer – you see Jeanette now owns and rides a bicycle.

I cannot allow myself to create a scarf for her, because in the time I have been living here in the Netherlands – now in our 20th month, I have viewed with some trepidation the scarves worn by all and sundry. There are many many beautiful scarves here, but they are a little risky as the common form of transport is 2 wheeled as in bicycle, scooter and motor bike. You all know the story of celebrities who have died because of the scarf they wore on that fateful day.

So now I create NOT ISADORA DUNCAN pieces – that is cowls, neck warmers, moebius scarves and so on. See my ETSY shop Category NOT ISADORA DUNCAN SCARF

In New Zealand I created many many scarves. I used a variety of textured yarns and there are so many non plied yarns out there such as bouclé, eyelash, faux fur, different kinds of ribbons or tapes (ladder and rail road style) and other mixed textured and art yarns. When I created a scarf I always knitted these special yarns along with a fine alpaca, mohair or wool yarn – not only to create a warmer scarf but also for the colour effect and the feel of it next to the skin. I also found that knitting a normal yarn with the fancy meant the scarf held its shape better as well. I did this also with my many knitted shawls. I do still have a few scarves I have knitted – but if you own a bicycle I might not let you buy the scarf.

One could create scarves or shawls with a fancy yarn knitted with a “normal” yarn and never repeat a combination for years and years. If one wanted to that is.

Now having lived here in the Netherlands, I will probably not knit many more scarves as I really like the cowls and neck pieces I am creating and maybe even in mountainous New Zealand there will be a drive towards 2 wheeled transport and that means many more “NOT ISADORA DUNCAN SCARVES”.

I have received some suggestions regarding my patterns so I will be adding the following patterns on to Unique Boutique Knits on Etsy over the next couple of weeks. I hope you will take a look.

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

This is a delightful way to design and then create a unique shawl as a gift or for yourself using only yarns from your stash. Sort through your yarns and find a group of colours that work together, by tone, or colour group, or contrast – whatever excites your eye when you lay them out together. The yarns should knit up at the same approximate gauge.

Select the needle required for the common weight of yarn. For example – Mainly 8 ply or double knit yarns – use a 4 or 4.5 mm needle.
It is generally not a good idea to use fine lace weight yarn unless you choose to use 2 or 3 strands knitted together to approximate the required weight and for the same reason don’t use bulky yarn if you are knitting mostly in double knit or 8 ply yarns. Having said that some yarns completely out of line with the whole can look very interesting and will not put your shawl out of shape as long as you are judicious about the amount you use and where you choose to include it. And I do do it all the time.

Take your yarns and lay them on the table in order of the quantity that you have – maybe 5 balls colour 1, 3 balls colour 2, 1 ball each of colour 3, 4, and 5, and oddments. Never never discard oddments.

Create a sequence for your yarn amounts like I have done for my listed yarn amounts – Col.1, Col.2, Col.3, oddments; Col.1, Col.2, Col.3, Col.4, oddments; Col.1, Col.2, Col.3, Col.4, Col.5, oddments and back to Col.1 and so on.

For my example I would knit 4 rows of Col.1 and 2 rows of Col.2, 1 row of Col.3, 4, & 5 and knit a row of any group of oddments. If you have lots of oddments – Knit 2 rows each time

Cast On 4 Stitches. Slip 1, K 1, YO k to end – on every row. Continue till it is the right size for you. The Cast off row can be a row of oddments or any of the colours still available at the end. There is more finishing if you use a group of yarns to Cast Off but then you are creating a unique piece.

Add a fringe if you wish.

You do not need as many skeins of each yarn as I have suggested – you can have all part skeins, or oddments, variegated yarns, faux fur – absolutely any yarns as long as they knit at about the same gauge. If you have 25 small amounts of yarn and several skeins of black or dark blue or purple or whatever – You can frame sections of many colours with the solid colour that you have a reasonable amount of. In this type of colour design work – what matters most is that the colours together please your eye. It is important to trust your instinct or response when looking at the colours together.

Go for it, knock ‘em dead with your design skills. It is fun.

Which is covered in snow and ice with the odd bit of green grass trying to show itself. It was bitterly cold and we were on our way to buy of all things, Red Cabbage – at the Albert Hein To Go at the Haarlem railway station.

There was a young man walking across our path, about the same age as our son Morgan. We said Happy New Year to each other, He spoke to me in Dutch, and I said I didn’t understand him. He pointed at my very large “The blues” triangular shawl and said in English that he loved my shawl. So just maybe not having a wonderful intarsia sweater is not so important after all. Here in the Netherlands noone would see it as it would be under my coat and shawl. And my shawl is of many colours although it is mainly a rich bright blue, knitted in garter stitch and it wraps around my neck a couple of times which is crucial in this cold environment. In New Zealand I would not use it as it is never that cold and it is too large to just be a shawl over the shoulders. The problem could be of course that I am short and not that it is soo large.

Thank you young man for liking my shawl and for saying so.

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.

I had so many hand knitted scarves here, comes from being a really crazy knitter – that early in December when the weather really turned cold and the wind was bitter – I hung 5 scarves outside our little steeg on the railing along side the road, and 2 on the bridge railing close by.

I hoped someone would take them as they were clearly there to be freely taken.

And noone did for several weeks. I thought it was because they were not very nice, or poorly knitted, or not good colours or something. Only a knitter could be this neurotic.

Then they all suddenly went – all bar one. I am delighted they have gone.

My son came from Switzerland for Christmas arriving on Christmas Eve. He came in with the remaining scarf aloft – saying I think this is one of yours, you must have dropped it and someone hung it over the railing. That scarf has now gone to Switzerland.

I hope they all went to good homes and keep someone warm.

On the day before Christmas Eve we also took lots of scarves to de Schalm – about 25 in all. Thank goodness all the scarves have gone and I now have space for my new knitting here.

On our holiday in Denmark, in August, we were taken to the Old Town (Den Gamle By), by Anne and Michelle where I discovered (or rediscovered) the Danish shawl – and I have made 4 so far – just to see how they work. I have played with the shape and number of Yarn Over increases to see how I can modernise it as the original is wrapped around at the waist and tied at the front which is absolutely charming, but not too modern looking.

The Danish Shawl is not a true triangle – The long edge is curved, which makes it sit well over the shoulders.

The first one I started at the point and increased only on the sides – and of course, as I knew it would – it created a true triangle. I knitted it in gorgeous purples/blues in SandnesGarn (from Norway), yarns that I purchased in the north of Denmark. That was for Natasha

I then looked for a pattern and found the Osark shawl – and have been playing with that. My first attempt is not even worthy of a photo, the shape looked like a salmon steak – not the colour – but the resulting shape was too long and not wide enough. It will be unraveled at some time. But it gave me a starting point.

My next was okay, I have not added the 2 colour crochet edging as yet. I used a grey/fawn 100 % natural yarn with a variegated New Zealand yarn from Manukau Knitting Mills.

The latest shawl / scarf I have created had increases – by single Yarn Overs at the 2 side edges as well as up the middle and has been knitted with a variety of 4 ply yarns which has included sock yarn, Rowan kidsilk haze, Rowan 4 ply Botany and some other odd scraps. The bell ruffle edge I used is from a pattern by Jane Sowerby. I love the resulting shawl/scarf and will create fingerless gloves to go with it. (That means double pointed needles – very scary !!).

I have aready created the hat using the same yarns last winter.

It is amazing what knitting opportunities there are when you live in the Northern Climes as opposed to New Zealand.

A pattern will be created.