new project.
double pointed needles.
mods to koolhass (originally a hat by jared).
soon my hands will have a new way to be snug and warm.
Tag Archives: process
from the start
after a few e-mails
,
a small envelope arrives.
different widths,
different to the touch,
all silk.
i can pick three,
& then the colors that
each will be dyed.
i’ve stood at
many a yarn shop
and had certain colorways
call out to me.
i usually know what i like and what i don’t.
but, this time i can choose any of the colors shown here.
my mind is speechless.
my ability to choose freezes in the waves of the near endless possibilities crashing
again and again inside my head.
i head to rocks (me and my thing for rocks) for inspiration.
but should i choose the colors in turquoise, or lapis or one of the agates?
i stumble across this ring on etsy.
this is it.
i know it.
wow, ruby agate.
when applied to the silk strands i chose,
it looks like this.
now the hunt begins: to find
,
or to plain old make-up,
a stitch pattern of some sort
that will do it justice.
nothing else feels like silk.
nothing.
it has its own personality,
its own flair.
most of my cousins were ready to tear the needles and skein from my bare hands
as i worked three or four inches of one idea after the next,
each was frogged.
they were not quite right.
not for this yarn…
until finally, intertwined cables
(the result of graph paper
paired with more
than a few sharp pencils)
fit the playbill. ahh,
corriente‘s ‘born’.
up on the housetops
the colors of this yarn
(south west trading company’s oasis in the colorway ‘purplexed’)
remind me so much
of pictures i’ve seen that captured
the sun just as it was sinking over the plains of africa.
and i have never seen anything else like balboa trees.
they are different enough from the trees
of my homegrown new england
as to look surreal outlined against the vast stretches of that foreign sky.
go ahead and ask … why the buckle?
i have friends
who moved their family to mombasa, kenya
and shortly thereafter taught their 7 yr old son
how to aptly maneuver a slingshot
so he could scare the monkeys
off the roof of their house.
monkeys,
(daily) on the roof of their house…
sometimes, it seems,
you have to be a little tough
to earn the right to live surrounded by such incredible beauty.
the stories behind ‘the great deep’
it was a year ago
(where did the time go?),
that malabrigo yarn got in touch to say
i had been picked as an mfpp (malabrigo freelance pattern project) indie designer,
paired up with alison, and given the theme ‘glittering fish’
with this photo for inspiration.
alison and i spent the next few weeks
sending notes & sketches back and forth.
by the end of the summer we had a
rough idea of who would
do what and in which malabrigo colorways.
then the nuts and bolts
of putting patterns together began.
re-swatching, tweaking, and lots of math.
now here it is june already.
my 6 patterns (also available as an e-book)
were released on friday. alison’s are coming up soon.
do, i’ll spend the next 6 days posting about the underwater inspirations
for each of my patterns,
why i named them what i did,
and a little about some of what did and didn’t turn out the way i expected.
remember my leap into steeking?
that was one of the patterns in ‘the great deep’.
check out the e-book patterns here
can you tell which one?
up next – ‘peixe’: what i thought it was going to be
and how it set me straight.
one day out
and as a final shot
(before the e-book release tomorrow),
here are the ceramic pots that line the cobblestone walk
that leads to one of my favorite local yarn stores, fancie purls.
ann, the proprietor of said lys and an all around cool knitter, was kind enough to let
me change in her bathroom, because it was that or changing in my car.
and her bathroom is infinitely nicer, although
my car has a better stereo. (grin)
3 days out
simplicity
i am finding the rhythm of k1, p1, rib so very peaceful tonight
after all the more complicated stitches i’ve been jumping through the hoops of lately.
huge thanks to the gals at in the loop for finding me just the right yarn
to cast on for the planche vest from the newest issue of ik (summer 2012).
this is how it goes
you know when
you lean way back
in a kitchen chair until
there are only two of its legs
left on the ground?
then you tilt
just a tiny bit farther
and you almost fall,
but at the very last second
you catch yourself?
steeking feels
an awful lot
like that.
an unwritten law of knitting
why yes,
i am currently
working on
a tight deadline.
how did you
even know that?
ah yes,
the intensity of
the errors made
does seem to be
directly related
to the amount
of time
that i don’t
have left to finish.
nearly wordless wednesday
when malabrigo’s gruesa did not want to be what i wanted it to be: popcorn break!
