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Tres Chic Veronique

 

designing...

I think when you've been knitting for a while, you start to "get" how a sweater is structured. You cast on stitches for the front, do a little decreasing, then a little increasing, bind off for the armholes... It starts to feel like a fill-in-the-blank template. In fact, it can be: just look at Ann Budd's Handy Guide to Knitted Sweaters! Easy, right? Right? OK, fine, maybe not so easy...

My point is, the idea of using an Ann Budd template and a stitch pattern from my stitch a day calendar to design my very own sweater somehow does not seem very imaginative to me. I want something with more panache. So, for the past few days, I've been contemplating my large stash and trying to figure out what to make with it, and I am getting very ambitious... "Panache"? "Imaginative"? "Ambitious"? Should I really go this route?

I'm inspired by all the fantastic sweaters out there which stray from the conventional construction. Here's a few of my favorites:

  • Klaralund has sleeves that extend to form the top part of the sweater and the V neck.
  • Tubey's sleeves and top part are knit in one piece, and create the niftiest square neckline.
  • Hanne Falkenberg's Mermaid (oh, it pains me to type that) is knit sideways and has swing-y gussets that make you want to twirl.
  • Annie Modesitt's Pin-Up Queen in Stitch 'n Bitch uses short-row shaping to create the 2 slanting sides of the V neck.
  • Knit and Tonic's Somewhat Cowl is knit in the round and has that great cowl-like neckline.
All these sweaters have clean and elegant lines, yet incorporate one clever element. That makes them both wearable and fun knits. And every knitter out there wants to make something that is delightful to knit AND that you can actually wear. You've probably guessed that if I'm going to take the designing plunge, I really want to come up with something clever! Which means... I have to become clever. Can I learn clever? If I stare at clever patterns long enough, will I be rewarded with a clever idea?

I've now latched on to a design element that I'm starting to see everywhere. Can I cleverly make it my own?

In the meantime, I am thoroughly amused by my new i-cord toy:
icord
I cranked this out in mere minutes!! I used my Herrschner's gift certificate from the lab to buy this gadget.

By Veronique
On Thursday, January 05, 2006
At 1/05/2006 11:53:00 AM