The weekly chronicles - 1
Hello there, it's been a hectic week for me! On a global scale with all that's happening in the world, and on a smaller scale with personnal stuff far for being pleasant. But I managed to encounter things that I liked. In a way, like knitting, stumbling upon stuff that interests me is a way to cope. I'm sure some of you can relate.
One thing I'll add is what I'm sharing with you on these little posts isn't necessarily groundbreaking, or might be known to you. I'm not trying to make a niche repertoire of things and overwhelm myself by trying to find incredible things each week. I'm just sharing things I liked in a relaxed manner. Feel free to let a comment, or contact me. I'm pretty introverted but I love to talk with other people about stuff I'm passionate about 😊.
Things I've seen that caught my eyes
Typeknitting - Rüdiger Schlömer
Typography is something that I like very much. Naturally, if someone links two things I'm interested in such as typography and knitting, of course that I will be inclined to check what it's about. I do believe that I already seen their work before, but at the time I didn't took the time to see what they do.
Rüdiger Schlömer is a graphic designer, author and "typeknitter" from Switzerland. Their main focus is the exploration of typography through knitting.
On their website, they wrote :
Typeknitting explores the typographic potential of hand knitting techniques like Fair Isle, Slipstitch, Mosaic, and Patchwork Knitting. This results in tools like knitting patterns, knitable typefaces and a book, empowering knitters who want to include messages, and graphic designers looking for tactile techniques.
I like to see different approaches to knitting, and fibre arts in general. Things that I wouldn't do, because it's not how I express things. As a knitter that likes to knit garments, I usually think about the image of a said object, how I want it to look like. Maybe try to express a feeling throught an atmosphere if I'm sharing pictures of it. Of course, I'm no photographer so it's difficult to make it look like I want it to be. But I try. For me, it's more the idea expressing an atmosphere than conveying a literal message.
The idea to use knitting as a way to express something more literal, a message that can be understood at first glance is not what I would do with my knitting but that doesn't mean that I don't find it interesting. You could also just knit letters and focus on the beauty of the shapes and overall composition. Knitting letters is not revolutionnary, but I find their approach interesting, especially how they use different knitting techniques. This is a vast subject related to the powerfulness of art, how politic can art be. I'll avoid writing a thesis right now even thought the subject is important and of great interest to me. Somehow, the knitting designer Lydia Morrow comes to mind when I think about text and knitting.
Typeknitting's website :
Amirisu Assemblage volume 1
If you're like me and liked Amirisu when it was a magazine, you might have already seen their new publication Amirisu Assemblage. They teased us pictures of the patterns these past few weeks on Instagram and I've been quite intrigued. As the name implies, it's an assemblage of patterns - and designers- with a range of garments and accessories. I know some of the designers, and some others are new to me.
Most of the big knitting magazines are history now, and it is pretty sad. Pompom now focuses on offering patterns made with the yarn they sells in partnership with Hobbi, and Making stories will publish their last publication soon. So I'm really happy to see that Amirisu avoided to shut down completely.
Of all the patterns, two shawls caught my attention : Vasara by Inese Sang and Mysteria by Pufido. I'm not sure that I'll knit them because I usually dont have a need for shawls, but I like how they look.
Inese Sang is a Latvian designer living in Canada. I never knit anything from them, but one day I'm sure that I will. I love how well balanced are the composition of their patterns and their use of colour. I would not want to change anything because they're perfect as is. The same goes for this shawl. It's not my "style", but it is stunning. It's a beautiful mix of stitch motifs with a colourwork panel reminiscent of their Latvian heritage.
As for Pufido, they are a Turkish designer whom I saw patterns many times. I also never made anything from their patterns although I do find most of them very interesting. This one speaks to me. Usually, I prefer subtle colour palettes, and I do think that if I were to knit it, I would choose a calmer contrast. But it's not the colours that strike me, it is the fluidity of the pattern, the flow that is has. The transitions in between the motifs are stunning, that kind of detail is something that attracts me immediately. It's like it tells a story with multiple chapters, and the story makes sense and aren't bits and bobs juxtaposed in hope that it'll work.
Left : Inese Sang's Vasara, Right : Pufido's Mysteria
Here's a video where you can see a presentation of all the designs (it's in Japanese, but the translated subtitles don't seem too bad).
Patterns to be published
Melon sweater by Maya Déglon (formerly Millahism tinks)
Wip pictures kindly sent to me by Maya + pictures of the finished sweater taken from the test knit call
I have discovered Maya through her video podcast on Youtube and seen her first steps into designing with the popular Skeeter skirt. Since then, she published 2 patterns + 1 which is in the test knit phase at the moment. I tested the very pretty Halmoni Shawlette for her, and it was a pleasant experience. For now, the shawlette is the only thing I knit from her but I'm sure that it'll change -always this problem of having too few hours in a day!-
The melon sweater really caught my attention. If you know me, you will not be surprised. You'll also probably know that I would knit it in a less vibrant colour palette even if I like hers (but it's not "me" colours, you know?).
What I find interesting here, is how she uses that small two coloured stitch pattern. I generally don't find it really interesting when a stitch pattern is applied all over a sweater or the body of a sweater. I kinda need something to link the parts together, just like Pufido did with their shawl.
Here, she plays with the motif. She did a previous version that was frogged, where you could already see the stripes on the shoulders but no icords. One of the reasons why it was frogged was that the slip stitches motif paired with stockinette stitch stripes would not behave correctly when shaping the shoulders. The stockinette stitch and the slip stitches motifs have a very different gauge. When you work increases to shape the shoulders, well, it will make that gauge difference very apparent, more so with a construction with increases happening on each rows at some places (contiguous construction).
So, what she did to solve that issue is that she decided to add icords where the stripes where. Icords have a much more similar gauge to the slip stitches motifs than the stockinette, so it works. Then she decided to make those icords run along the arms, and the body of the sweater. She talks about it in this video, and that video.
I love that kind of solution to a problem, even more so when it results in something cool and different that what you can come across. I encourage you to go see her videos about it if you want to know more.
She sent a test call yesterday if you like test knitting ! Money and time are not something that I have a lot at the moment, so I'm not sure that I'll be able to apply but we'll see.
News from The masked owl knitting laboratory
Not a lot happened since last week regarding my own designs. I finished the edging of my last Hubane sample and I cannot say how much that little collar is soft and airy at the same time. I looked from afar the Nutiden trend and finally bought some a while ago because I like to see for myself. Let's just say that I understand the hype now even though I will not knit all the things with that kind of yarn. I might write more about it here if I find the time. Doing the finishings with that yarn e(paired with mohair) was the most slowest thing there were though. It felt like 10 days, but I love the result.
Other than that, my testers are finishing their versions. I love seeing their yarn choices, they're all so different. It's really inspiring to me. I like when people make their interpretation of a pattern, and they don't use the exact same yarn than me. Diversity makes me happy generally. I also am always very humbled by the fact that people want to make a pattern that I wrote.
And I also finished my Rillen sweater and it turned out absolutely beautiful. The test knit was very pleasant, and the pattern is written in a way that I like. It seems like Rui Yamamuro is a sewist and I can say that it shows in how the details are thought. It's a beautiful sweater. Above I said that usually sweaters with an all over texture bored me. This one does not, all the details are really well thought. The proportions are just right. I will wear this sweater a lot (and I need to take pictures of it)!
Oof that was long, so I better finish here. I wish you a good week and I hope you're still awake after reading all this.
Until next week 🦉
Géraldine / The masked owl