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Inspirations and Influences: Time Traveler

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Photocredit: Sockupied

I’ve got a new pattern that released this last week, and you might have caught a glimpse of it as I hinted at it’s existence.  Time Traveler is a pattern based off of my love of historical knitting and crochet patterns, and I couldn’t be happier to have it released into the general public.  Let me tell you, for all the sock’s simplicity, it took me forever to figure out how to get the lace to wrap around the ankle without breaking the stitch pattern anywhere.  Absolute ages.  But it all works now: and I’ve done all the hard thinking for you!

Let me let you in on a little secret: every once and a while I like to pay homage to my favorite authors with my patterns.  One Salt Sea is a homage to Seanan McGuire’s book by the same name (which in turn is a homage to Shakespeare, but I digress).  Time Traveler is a tip of the hat to Diana Gabaldon, whose Outlander series features a time traveling heroine.  I have a few other patterns whose design sub names followed that name-scheme, but many of the names don’t make it to publication.  I have to admit, when I named Time Traveler nearly a year and a half ago, I didn’t know that the Outlander Series would be in the process of being made into a TV series.

Photocredit: Sockupied

There’s so much I love about how these socks turned out: the picot hem, which I love (and would like to use more!), the way the lace seamlessly travels into the rest of the sock (which, dear readers, you don’t know how hard that was!), and the deep plummy color of the yarn.  I love the way the heels are worked, the way the toe expansion forms – quite simply, I adore the socks so much.  The Hazel Knits yarn is a really good choice for this pattern: you need a sturdier sock yarn in order for the lace to block out and show well.  Something that is softer (but more fuzzy) doesn’t quite show how the increases and decreases interplay to make the lace what it is.

Later in the week I’ll be talking about historical patterns, and a little bit about the not-so-easy process of reading them and mining them for ideas.

Until then, enjoy!

Photocredit: Sockupied

4 Quick Exercises to Draw Inspiration From Nature

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Credit: Chimney Corners Camp

I’ve mentioned before that Fall is my favorite season.  The apartment smells like apples for the third week in a row (the applesauce is done, the apple butter and apple pie filling. We’ve moved on to dry apples).  I’ve pulled out my comfy sweatshirts and my slippers.  I’ve moved away from socks (my go-to summer knitting) to a snugly rug for in front of my bathroom.  And every day as I go for a walk or travel to and fro, I stop and look at the leaves to see the color gradually change (I can’t help feel competitive; the camp where I grew up is already in a glory of color).

For me, I see echos of nature wherever I go, and they come to roost in the back of my brain, to slip out weeks or months later when a design call has need.  But sometimes it’s fun to do different things to get yourself inspired about nature.  Below is a list of different exercises I sometimes use when working on a design call.

  1. Capturing lines: go for a walk with a camera or sketchbook.  Get really close to things and
    by PictureWendy

    sketch them.  Use only the most basic lines.  I love looking at butterfly wings, veins in leaves, whorls in seashells or patterns in broccoli.  Could you replicate those patterns or lines with stitches?

  2. Unexpected color: I love going to the farmer’s market and finding unexpected color combinations.  Go to the zoo or hop on pinterest.  What colors does nature throw together that are unexpected or stunning?  Try pairing green with practically anything.  Flowers in all colors pair well with green. Try to replicate that in your own colorwork.
  3. Touchable texture: there are so many different textures you can encounter in the great big world!  Find something nubby, bumpy or three-dimensional.  How would you capture that in knit or crochet?  What would you do?
    by klugi
  4. Fractals or repeating patterns: I love going on pinterest and finding cool or interesting patterns.  There are so many repeating patterns in the water, in the air, or represented in flowers.  Could you take that pattern and put it on a hat, shawl or other creation?  What about the radiating lines of a palm leaf – would you capture that in intarsia, stranded knitting, or Irish Crochet? What about the interwoven patterns of exposed roots or rock – is that cablework, knotwork, or something else entirely?
Looking for more ways to get inspired?  Two of my favorite books are The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and the short and sweet Design Sources for Pattern by Jan Messent.

Inspirations and Influences: Isis Wings

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Isis Wings, published by Three Irish Girls, is now out.  Boy, this pattern has been a long time in coming!

Isis Wings was created four years ago, and was one of the very first patterns I designed.  It was created before I had even considered the idea that I could have a business based off of selling my knitting and crochet designs.  Isis Wings was conceived on the porch of the house my now-husband, Michael, I and two other friends rented.  The three of them were in their last year of undergraduate studies; I was working for the college Theatre Department at Davidson College.  During those hot summer days as I began my first full time job, I discovered that I suddenly had a profusion of free time: I was suddenly released from most of my extracurricular activities as well as my academic studies.

I had actual time to knit and crochet.  I no longer had to snatch precious moments from my studies and socializing time to work on my hobby.  I had whole evenings where I could have a hobby.  And I also, for the first time, had more pocket money than I really knew what to do with.

So I bought yarn.

I commenced knitting.  I think I finished them in just over a week – which was pretty impressive
for me.  I know the first one was finished in a weekend. You’ll note below that the original pair was worked entirely in twisted stitches – I’d just switched to continental knitting, and didn’t realize that I was twisting all of my stitches.  That realization would come two projects later.

Twisted Stitch Detail Shot

And then I let them sit.  You see, at the time I didn’t know how to write a pattern.  But I wore those socks a whole bunch.  I got a lot of compliments on them, and it’s about that time that I began to just think that I might be able to make some pocket money off of this hobby.

Later, I would answer Three Irish Girl’s design call, and my new roommate in Washington, DC, would help me name them Isis Wings.  I’d work to reconstruct what I did the first time – and only realize a year and a half later as I’m studying them, that I did an extra repeat on one of them (so they are not the same height).

See? Different Heights.

Inspirations and Influences: Witchlace

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Last week KnitPicks released Witchlace, and I was barely able to create the Ravelry page and the page on my blog.  So I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about Witchlace, why I love it, and why I think you should make it.

Witchlace is part of the KnitPicks Serenity Collection, which I’m tempted to make two or three things out of myself.  It’s worked side to side, much like Newport – and in fact, they were conceived as ideas close together.  Like Newport, Witchlace uses short rows for shaping, as the majority of the sweater is worked side to side.  Once the front, back and sleeves are done, the yoke is picked up and worked in distinctive broomstick crochet.

I LOVED working with Galileo.  It’s a beautiful, beautiful yarn and has an amazing hand.  It also lends itself well to crochet, and it comes in very vibrant and jewl-toned colors.  I would design something else in this yarn in a heartbeat – I’ve actually got a few ideas I think would work out well.

In a way, Witchlace was also heavily influenced by the design I made for Tangled Magazine: Sunburst Shawl.  Like the motifs in Sunburst, the broomstick lace in Witchlace is worked in the round – making the distinctive yoke pattern.

I have so much more to tell you about designing this pattern, but I’ll save it for my Post Mortem of Witchlace in a few days.

Carrying Davidson With Me

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I’ve been talking a bit the last few days about Davidson College (my alma mater), which has been on my mind since Michael and I are currently driving our way from Washington, DC to Davidson, NC.  As previously mentioned, we’re going for Michael’s brother’s graduation.

I’ve been talking about how Davidson College played heavily into the designing I do today.  From resources like The Needlecraft Center to the art program at Davidson, this town and college started the transformation from a casual stitcher to fiber-arts professional.  There is, however, one other major thing I’ve taken with me away from Davidson that has been instrumental in leading me where I am today.

My husband.  Michael.

Back then, of course, he was my boyfriend, whom I had been dating for three years.  As a freshly minted graduate, I had an English Degree in hand, a job working for my alma mater (which I was very happy about, as the job market had just plummeted), and a plan to live with Michael and two other friends in a house off campus.  Michael and my friends were all seniors, and a year younger than I.

Early design project that has been revised,
and will be published later in the year.

I found myself with a profusion of free time.  Having no course load and a job that lasted from 9-5, I had evenings free for the first time in my life.  It was amazing. I was doing more spinning than I had ever been able to do, and was knitting and crocheting up a storm.  I quickly tired of other people’s patterns, and began to work patterns of my own.

There was one such time, working on a pair of socks, that I began to write things down, so I could remember what I did for the second sock.  And it was about that time that Michael began to say, “You could make money from that.”

At first, I scoffed at the idea.  There aren’t many entrepreneurs in my immediate family, nor did I run into many people where I lived who ran their own business.  In contrast, Michael’s father has run a successful small business most of Michael’s life.  What seemed inconceivable to me seemed obvious to him.

Michael kept at it, though, asking thoughtful questions and encouraging me to learn enough about the industry to make an informed decision.  It was there
where I began to seriously think about what it would take to be a designer.  I wasn’t ready yet to take the leap, and I had a lot of learning to do, but it was at Davidson that the seeds were planted.

Inspirations and Influences: Newport

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Newport is one of the few designs that didn’t start with a stitch pattern, which is how I mostly design.  I get an idea for a pattern, and then I pull the shape of the thing around it.  Instead, Newport was directly inspired by Mary Jane Hall’s Cap Sleeve Top.  My room mate at the time had just created one in Ty-Dy Cotton, and I responded by creating my own in Ty Dy Wool.  I liked it, but I began wondering what would happen if I…?

About the same time, I had been admiring the patterns in New England Knits, specifically the pattern on the cover, the Middlefield Pullover.  I loved the asymmetrical line going down the side, I loved the open neck that showed the collarbones.  But… I wanted something in crochet.  And I wasn’t sure I wanted something quite as warm, or quite as fitted.

You can see where this is going, right?

The clincher was I had just finished a knit-along in Classic Silk, and after I had managed to pick the right size (I had forgotten I had lost so much weight, and used old measurements… silly me), I had a ball knitting the top up.  It just simply flew off the needles.  I had some classic silk left over, so I worked up a swatch in that, and sent it in.

The rest?  Well that’s another story that you’ll have to wait for.

Inspiration for Totem

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I am a liberal arts major, and was a straight A student throughout high school.  This was  not because I love to get good grades, but rather because I love to learn (grades were just a bonus).  I like knowing about things I had no knowledge of.

Totem has the genesis in several different ideas.  I was on the train home from one of Michael’s and my many journeys , and I had just finished Totoro, a slipped stitch pattern idea I had been playing with.  I was proud of the design, but I knew that this slipped stitch technique could be pushed father; that I could do more with it.

So I started noodling around with the leftover yarn I had from Totoro.  Because it was a highly varigated yarn, I knew I wanted a design that did a good job breaking up pooling.  The first idea wasn’t quite right, so I pulled out some more yarn and made this first swatch.

Okay, that pattern was pretty cool.  And the slipped stitches looked pretty neat.  But I didn’t think it was enough.  Was this really that different from what I did in Totoro?  I’d already done slipped stitches once, and a new pattern had to be interesting enough not only for me to knit the swatch, but different enough to be accepted as a unique pattern submission.  What else could I do?


I thought maybe I could add a cable, but I get frustrated when cables vanish in highly varigated yarns, and I wanted this to work with yarns like the one I was using.  I’d just finished reading through The Principles of Knitting by June Hemmons Hiatt, and I remembered that she had used another type of slipped stitch – a wrapped stitch.  Wrapped stitches would be perfect – not only would the necklace around the stitches stand out because of the yarn’s highly varigated nature, it would break up any pooling that could occur.  Sweet.

So I swatched some more, and I thought the pattern was doing well – but it was getting awfully repetitive.  Was there any way I could break it up periodically with something else?  I went back to my pinterest board to look at stitch patterns I had favorited – nothing.  So I went on Ravelry hoping that if I gave my brain a break something would pop up.

I came across a post that thesexyknitter (otherwise known as Sarah Wilson) on raverly posted about her pattern, Jon’s Sweater.  It uses slipped stitches and the lateral braid to create a wonderfully subtle texture.  I’d never heard of the lateral braid, but it looked so cool.

How hard could it be?

So I learned how to do it, using this video.

And then I added it to the pattern.

So now I had the pattern that you see here.  It has the lateral braid, the slipped stitches, the wrapped stitches, and it’s the picture that I sent to Sockupied for my proposal.

What do you think? Have you ever done a lateral braid?  How about wrapped stitches?

Inspirations and Influences: Sunburst Shawl

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You ever have a situation where you can trace exactly when a thought entered your head?  I can remember the exact moment that the idea for the Sunburst Shawl entered my head.  It was over a discussion of Fibonacci numbers and crochet, and I misspoke.  I meant to ask if it was possible to do a crochet technique in the round, and instead I said broomstick.

My friend replied she had never seen it done before, and I realized and corrected my mispeak, but the idea was then in my head.  WAS it possible?

But really, in some ways, I think the inspiration for the Sunburst Shawl goes back even further.

The Sunburst Shawl owes much of its inspiration to knitting.  Gasp!  It’s shocking, I know.

One of my favorite things to do is knit socks with the magic loop.  I’ve never been a big fan of knitting on straights, and while I like working on two circulars and did that for about a year, I started wanting my needles to have more than just one purpose.  I got into the magic loop because with a longer needle you can do big projects, but you can also use the magic loop to do small projects in knitting.

At the same time I’d also gotten interested in historical patterns, and both broomstick and hairpin lace.  Both techniques seemed like a great way to make quick crochet patterns with stunning results.  The only problem was that most people who were using these techniques were doing things similar to Doris Chan’s exploded lace.  They were working the techniques in worsted weight yarn.

I was interested in doing the work in something closer to lace-weight.  While lace is still far off from some of the weight yarn historical patterns were made in (especially with crochet) I thought it would highlight the open-ness of the broomstick stitches in a way that a thicker yarn would not.

This, combined with  the conversation I mentioned earlier in The Yarn Spot cemented the idea in my head.  It took a few months more of peculating, and a design call that spoke to me, to have everything align correctly.

I’d like to do more with the broomstick crochet in the round, both because I happen to like round things, and also because I think it’s wonderful to be able to take advantage of technologies that weren’t available before.

Besides, I like to do things that nobody else has thought to do yet.

Michael Sorting Patterns

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Michael was helping me organize some old pattern books as we worked to finish unpacking into our new place before his parents arrived the next day.  Partway through, he started flipping through some of the books and commenting on him.  This, to the best of my ability, marks his observations on some rather… interesting photos from an old knitting pattern book.  (Side note: please read all comments with as much innuendo as you can muster.  Also, Michael is a bit of an elitist when it comes to schools.  Davidson (our alma mater) is the “Ivy League” of the South, and since the South is better than the North, Davidson is better.  And, lest you argue that Duke is on the caliber of Davidson, Michael will let you know that Duke has neither an honor code or a free laundry service.)
Men’s Book: Skiing, Ducking and Golfing, Just what three guys like to do on a Saturday afternoon.  (Jen’s note: I love how one guy is planning on going skiing, another golfing, and another is just holding a wooden duck.  Put a bird on it! Takes new meaning.)

There, Steve, that’s where we’re going to go.
Hey, wanna see my Sword.  Look at that line of eyesight.  You know what’s going on there.  They’re probably from Harvard too.  Harvard dudes would be like that.
Do I look spiffy in this Cardigan.  He also looks like Pierce Brosnan.
Huh.  He’s totaly from Yale.  Look at those eyes.  He’s like I’m holding a penicl and this is a globe. What are you doing tonight.  And I’m wearing a sweater vest-cardigan thing.  Look at him, he thinks he looks so spiffy.
OOOH.  Zippers, seriously?  That’s funny.  He’s also a Yaleie.  He’s like, I’m going to take your picture, pose for me.  I’m looking good in this sweater/cardigan.
*Laughs*  Nice… rackets you have there.  That’s what she’s saying.  He says, I know, let’s go play with my shuttlecock.  I don’t know where they’re from.,  They’re wearing white, which says southern to me, no self-respecting southerner would pose suggestively like that.  I got it.  They’re from Princeton.
Oh, it’s old man bowling!  I don’t know if he’s actually posing, he looks a little natural.  Strikes every time, with that sweater in his bowling league.
He is totally from Yale.  Just look at thsi face, he’s like, that’s right, birdies, they’re all mine.  Look at the smug cock of his left shoulder. Because he’s wearing that knit/sweater/polo thing.  He thinks he’s all that.
With English accent.  I am sir goodfrey.,  This is my knitted chain-male.  Look as I pose with my helmet with my coquests from the far east.  I think he’d look better with a mustache.
I’m not sure what to think about him.  He’s creepy.  Definitely from Cornell.  He’s just sitting there.  So, I throw the pidgen, will you shoot skeet with me?  Seriosly, who would ever wear something like that if you’re going to shoot skeet?  Obviously if you’re a yuppie going to Cornell you would.
Ooh, here’s one.  Definitely harvard.  He’s like, India. I’ve been to India once.  I saw it on my yaght, well, from my yaght.  I’m going to mark it on my globe as a place I’ve been to.
Harvard’s from Boston, right?  He’s from Harvard, ’cause he’s got ice skates.  He’s like, “want to help me sharpen my skates?”  Plus the cabling on this sweater really makes me go fast.  That and the creases in my pants.
Son, let me show you how to handle a firearm.  Gee, golly willikers, it dad, it looks like you hit him from here.  Up, no more trespassers.
Yey!  We’re so great we’re going to hold a trophy.  Okay, I’m done with this one.

Inspiration

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 I’ve been thinking lately about inspiration, and color.  It’s sometimes hard as a designer because I’m already supposed to be thinking about winter designs.  Such is the turn around process for publishing that it takes that long from design to actualization.  This can be hard, as the weather is warming right now, the air spring-like.

For instance, I broke out my sandals this evening for a run to pick up what is god-help-me-please the second-to-last piece of furniture we’ll be taking up to our eighth-floor apartment.  There’s cherry buds on trees, not yet bloomed.  The daffodils are out full force, Bradford pears are on the cusp of blooming, and the tree I’ve always thought of as the tulip tree (I’ll post a picture in a couple of weeks) is also out.

It means I have to be creative when trying to get myself in the mood, and the mindset of winter.  I have to think warm things, cool or cold nights, and heavy knitting on my lap.  Practically the opposite of what I’m thinking of now.

One of the ways I try to get myself in the mindset is visual images, and color.

Michael was transferring and organizing all the spices this afternoon.  He’s taken the week off before his vacation days end, and is taking the opportunity to get most of the packing we haven’t done yet.

I glimpsed a look at the spices he had put out on our (brand-new-to-us!) dish-hutch, and snapped some pictures.  I liked them because most of the spices are ones I normally think of as warm – the browns, the reds of curries and nutmeg, turmeric and other things.

These are the perfect things for me to draw me into the thought of winter, combating my growing certainty that it’s spring.  Spring spring spring!

On a side note, to prove that i’m right, and it is spring, Michael’s celebration dinner for us moving and settling into this new place was all about light flavors that move us away from winter.  We did have beef… you can see it poking out of the soup, but it wasn’t in a beef stock, rather a thinner stock, full of the last of the root vegetables.  Our salad was full of spring-ish things too… the mushrooms we’re growing in our closet (courtesy of my future mother-in-law – white buttons and Portobello).  There were cranberries, invoking the color we’re seeing in the fours, and lots of other delicious things.


And still, I must try to think, Winter.

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