ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

I Love Colour
I Love Colour Work
I love Intarsia
I love playing with colour in my creations

So you are not sure about how to proceed with adding colour to your work?

Cheat a little

Don’t knit a picture in intarisa
Don’t knit with a design in mind

Do knit with a colour theme
Do knit with an abstract free form kind of freedom

go with the flow of the yarns you have to hand and this is especially easy if you have variegated, self striping or oddments of various thickness, colour or texture in your yarn stash. This is stash busting 101.

You can add colour to your knitting with the help of those yarns – whatever they are – be they variegated, self-striping, or two or more different colours of yarn knitted together. Let the yarns do the work and take away some of the guesswork and planning to add the colour to your knitting. Simple intarsia or stripes with these yarns adds excitement and drama to whatever you are creating. Whatever you create this way cannot be repeated ever. You will create a unique piece.

Self-Striping Yarn:

Creating with a self-striping yarn is an easy way to add colour and drama to your knitting as the yarn changes colours for you. These are great for knitters who want to add colour to their work, but are not yet confident about choosing and knitting with many yarns as in intarsia, or on deciding on a colour range.

When I am creating with self striping or variegated yarns I often use a solid for my bands. But I may change to a range of solids – one colour each for the two wristbands and the bottom edge as well as another colour for the neck edge. Or I will use black or brown for every band or edge but I will cast on with the coloured yarn. Either way it produce a unique piece and the effect is wonderful.

The garment or piece created with a self striping yarn will most likely have colour changes that line up more or less in stripes along the piece. The stripes will be deeper on a narrower section of knitting such as the sleeves and thinner on the body or wider section of the knitting.

But you can still play – You could choose two or more self striping yarns or one complimentary solid along with the one or more complimentary self striping yarns and create a unique piece by doing free form intarsia with only two or three yarns.

Self-striping yarn can be used with any stitch, but depending on your design wish, the stripes can display more clearly with a Stocking Stitch (Stockinette Stitch), or reverse Stocking Stitch project. But this is colour work – and any stitch or pattern that that you like and enjoy is perfect. There are simply no rules in this. Just Play.

Working with Multiple Strands:

Knitting with two or more strands of yarn together is another way to add colour, drama, magic, individuality, uniqueness and texture to a project.

There may be some technical management issues for you when knitting two or more strands together – that is the yarn will tend to twist and tangle – NOTE that it does not adversely affect the finished knitting and there are ways to reduce the problem should it drive you crazy.

You can wind the yarns together in a ball, or feed the individual yarns from a separate ziploc bag. Or you could go with the flow of the knitting – you are playing with colour after all, and you are creating a unique piece – SO be brave – Break the yarn, add another colour and continue knitting. Wind the tangled yarn back to the ball it came from and add it to the knitting again later.

Variegated or Multi coloured yarn:

I love variegated yarns – and I love the surprises one gets as the knitting progresses.

Variegated or Multi coloured yarn can create colour pooling which may be an issue depending on your view of it. You could also call it a design feature and just take advantage of it.

Colour pooling is a bit unpredictable. Manage it by changing the yarn when you can see that you are developing a pool – for example: The colour red has a couple of sections/rows together – so break the yarn when you are back at the red section. Reattach at the red point on the yarn to be knitted so that the Red pool becomes bigger – and a design feature. You will have a short section of yarn of other colours – keep it and you will find somewhere else to add this into your knitting. Weave in the yarn ends as you go.

Add Swiss darning over your knitted stitches, when you have completed the piece – to alter the way the colour looks either by making the pool of colour larger or by adding another colour to distract from the pool if you do not like the effect.

Include slip stitches to break up a block of colour – the slipped stitch colour then shows in the next row – breaking the colour section of the new row.

Free form design on Beret

Add a Stripe where you do not want the colour to pool, or insert a two row stripe of another colour every 4 or 6 rows of the varigated yarn knitting.

You can also work from the centre and the outside of the same yarn ball to knit two rows with from the inside and two from the outside.

or do what I do – call it a design feature whatever happens.

It is your project, do what feels right for you.

Trust your own instincts

and Play with Colour

My next pattern, by the end of this week as long as life goes to plan.

The original was created for my “Colour Play” exhibition held in Auckland, and it went to Angelica in Switzerland.

It is a Simple, Sweet Shell – which could be knitted from any yarns – such as wool, mohair, faux fur, eyelash yarn, what ever stash yarns you have that knits at the same tension or similar tension, or in just one colour or just one yarn. This shell was knitted in the round to the armholes.

Creative Coverings I have created and added to the Creative Coverings Photo Album on my Facebook Business Page.

If you are new to Intarsia you may have questions that I could answer which will help you with what you are creating now. Those questions may also give me additional ideas on what should be included in my Intarsia book.

I have started a topic “Intarsia Knitting”, on my Facebook business page under the tab Discussions requesting questions and queries on Intarsia knitting.

The book, which has no name as yet, will cover the skills of knitting using the Intarsia method from working with a basic graph to how I work in the free form way.

It will cover the technical aspects – geared to a learning Intarsia knitter and develop the skills in increments from graph, geometric to free form, over a range of projects. The project patterns will be included. So far projects include a small wall hanging, a sweater, and a jacket.

This is an important project for me – and it has been rummaging around in my head for a long time. Now is the time for me to make it happen. Please join me on the ride as we can all benefit from each others skills, interests, and especially queries.

not knitting, not knotting, knitting knotting, not knitting, knitting yeah, I am knitting.

Well, I will be very soon.

I have been working all day or so it feels, on setting up a Facebook business page – and I keep saying to myself – why? It doesn’t look like a business page, it doesn’t act like a business page – or maybe I am just not a business pager. But the little supportive voice in New Zealand who knows all about these things – profiling and all that stuff tells me I must.

So I am, or I will, or I am progressing – nearly.

I did not choose the option of “other business” (and in hindsight I probably should have done so), and I did choose the “artist” option and it makes a difference to the tabs you receive to play with – and hey you can’t rename the tabs. Well I haven’t discovered if you can rename the tabs. There is no specific function under the tab so why not be able to rename it??? Why can’t I change the business page type to “other Business” without losing what I have already created.

Maybe I am just not a business pager – that could be it.

Carbon Footprint - Shadow Knitting - Small wall hanging

But I will be back shortly to a multi coloured beret, and then I am finishing my intarsia carbon footprint bag. I have said it before, and I hope you don’t mind.

I love intarsia

I don’t love pictures in intarsia

I am okay with graphs, I can create them, and follow them, and they do create pictures.

The trouble is I got quite excited about the concept of representing a carbon footprint in knitting or crochet, you know – using our wonderful skills and creativity in a world confused by our presence. So CARBON FOOTPRINTS on our bags, afghans, sweaters (maybe), wall hangings (which is where I started), where ever you like. I just can’t get excited knitting pictures using the graph, (too formal I think) and that is why the Carbon Footprint bag has taken eons.

BUT I absolutely love free form colour work – intarsia knitting – and it keeps calling me, which stops me from what I should be doing.

Maybe, that is why I don’t get the Facebook Business Page model – the nearly formal activity that a business page should be, in an informal social environment.

I am now on beret six – there is some minor madness when one keeps on playing with a piece. These have all been created using Vero yarn but in the different colours that I have here in the Netherlands.

I do miss my yarns that are still in New Zealand.

How can I miss yarn? I cannot even remember what was in my stash there – just that there were lots of yarns, in lots and lots of colours, from many different places in the world. But I do miss the variety in colour, yarn type, do not have sufficient variety here to create pieces as I was doing in New Zealand. I have purchased a lot of different yarns here in the Netherlands and some in Switzerland and in Denmark – I just do not have the quantity, colour range and yarn types here as I did have at home. It takes time to build up a new stash, doesn’t it?

What to do?

I don’t know.

So right now I am knitting berets.

Originally this was in response to a commission from a friend in Australia. But now I need to consider – do I continue with these? Do I complete the commission? Well yes that I must do, which means that beret 7 must be a funky, fuzzy, multicoloured piece. Then I must write up the pattern and then get back to that carbon footprint bag. Maybe I just put the two graphs out, one for the intarsia footprints and the other for carbon footprint using shadow knitting and leave you to decide – should it be on a bag, blanket, pram cover, cushion or on a sweater – should you happen to want a sweater with a foot print or two on it.

I guess that is what should be done.

The beret pattern – will include one in stocking stitch, and one felted from a stocking stitch knit. I won’t try to define the multicolour, multi fibre, intarsia one – that will be free form with little guidance.

I am reorganising the galleries and I hope that if you like free form intarsia, and some more formal intarsia that you will enjoy viewing this gallery.

I have just looked at my pile, no, my mountain of UFO’s. So the sweater or jacket will have to wait until the new year. In the meantime I am finishing my unfinished pieces.

3 x Danish Shawls
4 x Moebius scarves
6 x Capes requiring buttons, trims, etc
1 x large bed cover – Christmas present
and 2 pairs of red socks to be created by Christmas – and I have not started them as yet, and they are orders, family orders but still orders.
and 2 hats to be created for 2 boys – also Christmas presents
and 1 cardigan to be completed which could be a Christmas present. It was indirectly a request, and 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 just cannot get into these stripes – too formal, not challenging, not interesting but I shall venture on, maybe add some other colours, maybe slip in some intarsia or even try some fair Isle.

The big thing is that my very own magically coloured, intarstia knit, free form, creation, in many yarns, is not going to get a look in for a while.

I have never never made, knitted, created a pair of socks before either – too many challenges and not enough time.