ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

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.

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 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.

Might have been called Waterloo on Beresford – reflecting its previous life as the site of the local underground mens toilet on the corner of Beresford and Pitt Streets which had a rather seedy reputation. The toilets were closed in the early 1990’s.

After some time the building was refurbished as a cafe restaurant – with extensions on the road level. The original interesting artistic tiles on the walls of the toilet area downstairs in what became the bar remained. I have tried to find out the origin of the tiles – but have been unsuccessful. My memory tells me they were created for Auckland City by an artist – and they were deemed unsuitable and had a new life in these toilets. I cannot even find out if the tiles still exist. I hope so even though my memory of them in the bar is very hazy and it is not hazy because I drank there in that underground bar. I went down once just because I had heard of the tiles and had been told they were there and worth seeing. Not being a man I could not have viewed them otherwise and it is some years ago. If I recall any more I will update the log and maybe someone will let me know more.

However the food was divine, the character of the place interesting and the wine list superb. I introduced my husband and my Australian boss to excellent Pinot Noir here.

Today it is call The Supper Club and I have emailed them for information regarding the tiles. I know this is nothing to do with knitting – but there you go – maybe there will be a new sweater design in this.

And the original owner and staff liked my sweaters and I loved the food, the wine and the music.

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.

Vogue Knitting Tour Group pictures from the Colour Play exhibition.
Fiber artist and knit designer Connie Lene Johnston gave us a sneak peek of her “Colour Play” collection. The show would officially open in a few days, featuring her work as well as that of students from the Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design.

During the wine-and-cheese reception, Ms. Johnston described each garment’s evolution, texture, construction and how she used color in each one. We were invited to try on the clothes—not your typical art exhibit.

Vogue Knitting Tour Group pictures from the Colour Play exhibition thank you to Alice Pepper

at the Randolph St Gallery – Whitecliffe School of Fine Arts & Design. September 2007.

ConnieLene’s unique knit designs alongside the work of BFA Fashion design students from Whitecliffe.

The Vogue Knitting Tour of Australia and New Zealand 2007, hosted by Nicky Epstein and Carla Scott, Vogue Knitting Knitting Editor attended the special opening.