Knit Sisters

Well, as loyal readers of the blog know, Ellen is away this week on vacation.  She’s gone to the beach and I know we all hope that she gets a mean sunburn and vicious bites from sandfleas has a great time.  So, you’re stuck with me this week.  Bwa, ha, ha, ha, ha!  Actually, Alex will be doing a spot of guest-blogging on Wednesday, so that’s something we can all look forward to.

Over the weekend I dug out my design inspiration journal and starting pasting things in it.  I have a habit of tearing interesting photos out of catalogs, magazines, ads, etc. and stacking them up with a vague thought that “Someday soon I will paste these into my journal.”  Recently I’ve been collecting lots of garment ideas/details from catalogs, but I also collect nature photos with beautiful colors, other textile designs, visual patterns, quotes, and just pictures that capture my imagination. 

So, I started cutting these things up and gluing them down.  I try not to be too careful as I do this–just let things flow onto the pages as they come.  Not too much self-censoring, which I can all too easily fall into.  And doggone if this simple exercise didn’t get my creative juices flowing in a big way.  My head is now full of sweater ideas, garment details, and design enthusiasm.  I have three or four new designs floating around in my head, as well as new ways to approach some design problems I’ve been mulling over.

I have a little book that I bought years ago called The Fabric Lover’s Scrapbook, by Margaret Dittman.  I don’t know if this little gem is even still in print, and the projects look pretty dated, but it is chock-full of great ideas.  (This book is aimed mostly at quilters and sewers who accumulate prodigious amounts of fabric scraps and stash.)  Every time I look at it I come away with something new.  For example, Dittman has this to say about inspiration and creative energy:  “Welcome any source of inspiration, however irrational….Use the energy.  Seize the moment.  There’ll be plenty of time later to talk yourself out of it.”

So I took my creative energy and started work on a new design I’m tentatively calling “Bamboo.”   The basic idea is for an Asian-inspired jacket with a bamboo-like background stitch pattern, and edging and details with a narrow leaf motif.

I started experimenting with bamboo-like stitch patterns.  Here’s what I finally came up with: 

 

Obviously, this swatch hasn’t gotten too far yet.  (Although there was an intermediate swatch in there that got ripped out.)  And for the leaf motifs, I searched through Knitting on the Edge and came up with this:

Now, much as I love this book and revere Nicky Epstein, what I don’t like about it is that all the instructions are written out instead of in charted form.  I had to sit myself down and chart that puppy out:

 

That was the first incarnation.  Here’s the second:

 

I started knitting from this chart, and got far enough to know what I wanted to change.  I ripped that swatch, (have I mentioned I do a lot of ripping out?) and re-charted:

 

This chart is for the edging with the leaves bending away from the center on either side, plus they are longer and narrower.  My idea is that this motif will be a low center-back panel, knitted separately and sewn on, that gathers the back of the sweater just a bit at the waist.  The front edging will be a similar sort of leaf edging, but I haven’t gotten there yet.  Today’s task is to work on these swatches and charts and try to firm everything up.

Remember Friday’s task?  The peach preserves?  Here’s a half-eaten jar:

 

Harvey has really been enjoying these.

And, lest you think that I never knit on actual projects, my progress on the cabled sock:

This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Designing woman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.