knitwear designers/artists

So, some of you know that I'm a bit of a design junkie. Usually this is within the confines of the mid-century realm, and that does extend into lots of things...furniture, architecture, art, fonts, you name it. And as you likely also know, that while I'm "into" fashion, for the most part it's nothing that I take too seriously (also there's that whole not-being-able-to-afford-most-of-it thing I've got going on). Oh yeah, and also: I'm a slob.

Very rarely do I make a truly expensive "designer" purchase (though I won't lie and say it hasn't happened on occasion ahem). It is often a discussion with the man of the house that I will turn my nose up at something if it costs more than three dollars (that is the thrift/junk/curbside re-appropriation/dirty picker in me!), and then turn around and buy a $300 (or worse but we won't go there) item in the same breath. What can I say, I'm an enigma.

But I am ALSO: queen of the knock off. If I can make it myself, I generally will. As knitters we are no strangers to the adaptation of patterns, or the desire to knit it yourself if you've seen it in a store. Seriously, since I've started knitting, when was the last time I purchased an actual "knit" sweater? Honestly, I can't remember.

So to that end I offer you: things we can't afford, but can probably make ourselves.

First up, from Kate Spade:



Ok, I am absolutely in love with these, and will definitely be attempting the Taxi ones, if not both pairs. Kate spade...hmmm, kinda not usually my thing--though I do think she does mod well when she does do it. Normally I might rant about the price of these basic mittens simply because "she's a designer" but apparently the sale of these mitts went towards the support of the women in Bosnia and Herzogovina who made them. Then I had an attack of conscience and felt really bad about even thinking about making my own pair.

In the end, they were sold out so I couldn't buy them anyway.

Also within the same hilarious/adorable/crafty realm from Jack Spade, these moustache gloves:



Fabulous. (and currently on sale...)

Or for the more adventurous, how 'bout you take some knitting inspiration from UK designer Lauren Jennings:



wow.

And if I wasn't already knitter, this amazing textile art from Aurelie Mathigot would still have caught my eye:


(found via Wool and the Gang --also newish knitwear designers (with their own line of yarn and knit kits you've probably seen by now) you should all check them out---they are even making me want a (gasp!) poncho)



And still one more non-sequitor for you (but still within the knit realm...) Phildar is having a SALE right now! I just bought three patterns books (in English for those of you concerned about that...) for about 15 euros (including shipping). Exchange rate or not, that's still a smokin' deal. You can buy yours HERE. The older the catalogue, the cheaper it is, so if there were some previous patterns you were drooling over, now may be your opportunity to get 'em for a song.

happy knitting! (oh and happy belated Canada Day and early 4th of July!)

free pattern alert!

I always love coming across free knitting patterns that I never knew existed. Actually maybe I should amend that to free modern knitting patterns (why is it only ever patterns from the nineties I seem to stumble upon?) And, I'm hurting for some inspiration these days so this couldn't have come at a better time.

Found this one via my friends over at Desire to Inspire.



The Puff Daddy knitted stool from Pickles.

Have any of you ever been on this site before? It appears to be Norwegian. Though like most Norwegians, there is some flawless English spoken there too. Personally I know how to say about three things in Norwegian (apart from hello of course):

1) turn up the music
2) I have to pee
3) you have beautiful eyes and I want you SO much

So, at least I have the fundamentals covered, but that still wouldn't really help me if I had to read an actual knitting pattern in said language.

This stool also appeals to me, as some of you might remember this post from awhile back about these poufs:



but at $1600 apiece, I think i'll just take Pickles' free pattern instead, thanks.

Other cute things from pickles:









and lots and lots of adorable kids' things:





Head on over and check Pickles out if you haven't already...I think there's something for all--craft tutorials, crochet patterns, sewing patterns (there is an adorable pattern for a bike seat cover I'm eyeing...) and oh yeah: CUPCAKES.



Sweet Marie I wish I was devouring about a half-dozen of those right now.

help m-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e

I think I am beyond help on this one. But here's my latest white whale.



Much like the aforementionned Moby Dick's white whale, this scarf is virtually all I'm capable of focusing on right now. Though unlike Ishmael, I'm going after this thing in a really half-assed way.

Ok I will stop now with the Moby Dick symbolism. I've never actually read that book (it's the former Literature-major in me...I am prone to sudden bouts of bullshitting my way through essay-type questions). It took me many years to learn how to self edit and I'm sure it's just a matter of time before you start seeing my blog posts in point form.

I mean, this is typically the point where handmade scarves CEASE to be knit. It's SIX FEET long already.



So uh, yeah. Six feet long already and I'm not half-way done yet??? Something is seriously wrong here. I know it's supposed to go to 9 feet, but it'll be more like 12 at this rate. I may have to seriously shorten the center section if ths thing is to be at all wearable in the end.

It's a bit of a conundrum for me right now. I have zero interest in starting anything new until it's done, yet I also have zero interest in knitting this thing too. I pick it up every evening and knit about a centimetre in length. What's wrong with me? I know I've been busy lately, and it's summer now but still...I seem to find myself either reading books or flipping through magazines in the evenings when I'm home. Anything to avoid this beast.

Even the S.O commented last night "you've lost interest in knitting?". Is he right? Or is this just a phase? I'm one of those knitters that never suffers from "startitis". More like "finish-itis". Even when I know something is horrible (and don't get me wrong ---this scarf isn't). I am still compelled to see things through to the end. I am incapable of abandonning any kind of project until it is completely done (then I usually forget about it forever). I am very obedient. I always do what I am told, and this scarf is no exception. See---I told you I needed a magazine rack for all of my issues....

So to that end, I think I need to spend some quality time trolling new patterns that will inspire me to actually pick up the needles again.
Though preferably small, fast and satisfying projects.

Cara's mittens

My dirty secret: I am a closet Twilight fan. There, I said it...let us never speak of this again.

What can I say, it speaks to the repressed 13 year old girl still buried deep within. If I was still 11 Edward would be my new John Taylor from Duran Duran.

But regardless of whether I've read all 4 books, including the Edward-only-perspective-version of the first book online, and on-demand-ed the movie the day it went to DVD (right...TMI) I would still have wanted to knit these super sweet mitts.



free pattern: Bella's mittens from subliminalrabbit --a thousand thank-yous for making this super cute pattern FREE!!
yarn: stash-busted Patons Classic Merino (100% wool) not quite two balls (knit double-stranded) in "chestnut brown"
needles: 4mm
mods: I knit to a tighter gauge to make the mitts smaller for my child-sized hands.



I am not actually as obsessed as I sound...there is no question that that movie was lame. I do not even remember seeing those mitts in the film (though I do remember there being a barage of gortex jackets, which given that movie's location shoot of my former home of Vancouver, is no surprise) Gortex is in essence, fashion suicide. Sure, it keeps you dry I guess.

But I am definitely not in a position to make fun of any Twi-hards out there. Particularly NOT given the ever-so-relentlessly-sliding-me-to-insanity scale of crap TV, pop culture, cheesy books, bad groupie bios and underground comics that yours truly likes to consume with regularity and without impunity. I'm Cara, and I have NO SHAME. Consider yourselves my support group.

I was excited to use up some stash yarn for this project. As with most of my stash-busting knitting, I ran out of yarn about half-way through the second mitt. (Sigh). So after putting it down for a few days trying to decide whether I would actually BUY more or abandon them forever, I hopped on my bike and sped off to my mom's house to route through HER stash. And SUCCESS, I came up with a couple small balls of leftover Chestnut Brown classic. Jackpot! I biked home and finished up the mitts. Then I biked BACK to give her what was leftover of that yarn, as I refused to keep it in MY own stash (anal much?). Suffice it to say that there are at least three different lot numbers of yarn in these mitts. I guess the fact that I was knitting them double-stranded probably accounted for why it all seemed to blend together pretty perfectly.



My only hiccup came about three-quarters of the way through the second mitt when I glanced down to dicover that I had somehow twisted one of the cables the wrong way. Grrrr. I had to rip back down past the wrist. But no matter, they went up pretty quickly in the end.

It was only after I'd FINISHED them and was about to block that I discovered that in ripping back I had apparently begun knitting again at a different spot. All this essentially means is that one mitt has one less cable repeat. When I tried them on, one was about an inch and a half shorter than the other. BLOCKING to the rescue! Now they are both the same length, regardless of the number of cable repeats.

Other than that there hasn't been much knitting around these parts (still inching along on that brown and orange scarf...). Mostly "gardening", but I won't bore you with those details. We're in a row townhouse, so it's not much of a backyard. It's more of a ditch, really. And by "gardening" I actually mean about three weeks worth of hauling off dirt (our backyard is apparently made of ROCKS)under cover of darkness and replacing it all with topsoil. A month later we are finally at a stage where we can actually begin planting things, though I am possibly now too sore and exhausted to do so.

C'est la vie. Hopefully soon we'll actually be able to enjoy the space back there a bit more.

Meanwhile, one MONTH later...

I'm back and all healed-up thank you very much! My wrist issues kind of went away on their own over time (and well a bit of massage therapy and icing thrown in there too...er, not cake icing though I imagine I've eaten my fill of that this last month to boot), but it quite literally took the better part of the month to come round for me.

Proof positive that I am officially back in the zone:



A finished knit!



AND might I add, a fab new camera so's I can dazzle ya'll with (for the most part...)some non-blurry images for once.

Head/hair flip notwithstanding, at least the shrug is in focus! I haven't entirely figured out how the stinking thing works yet I must say...and when I think back to all the SLR photography courses I took in college NONE of those seem relevant now.

But I digress, this has been wedding shrug experiment numero deux...

the deets:

yarn: about 2.5 balls worth of Elsebeth Lavold's Hempathy in "Sunflower" (I think? somewhere else this colour appears to be listed as "citrine" hmmmm) 41% cotton, 34% hemp, 25% modal.
needles: 4mm and 4.5mm
pattern: Two-tone ribbed shrug from Stefanie Japel's Fitted Knits 16 inch size
mods: smaller yarn, slightly smaller needles and shorter sleeves.

I was looking for an excuse to knit with Hempathy. Why did I need an excuse? um, I guess cuz I never really knit with summer-weight yarns, and I've definitely never knit with Hemp before. Anything knit, reagrdless of what it's made of is going to be hot as far as I'm concerned. Around these parts there is simply no relief from a 50 degree humidex, so what's the point? Well, Vegas may be a different story. It's hot there, but it's not sauna hot. A girl can cover up a tattoo in a place like Vegas...

Hempathy is predicatably scratchy. But also, it's not. There is a roughness to it that is not unpleasing. Never fear, there are no dreadlocks in my future... Plus, it likely softens up with a good blocking (which I didn't bother with --maybe later).

And this pattern...straight forward and well-written. It went up like a charm. This was actually the first thing I've knit out of this book. When I first bought it a couple years ago I felt like there were many patterns in it that I was drawn to, but in the end, not so much. Maybe my knitting tastes have changed? Maybe I got tired of looking at that weird waist-band included in every sweater? Who knows, but the bloom was defintely off THAT rose for me. When I went though it again though it seemed like there was a lot I'd over-looked.

Was this the best yarn choice for it? Again, not sure. (The pattern calls for worsted weight) so I was pretty much just knitting a bigger size on only slightly smaller needles. It came out fine, I love the colour, the airy-ness etc. but the collar definitely does not stand up the same way it should with a thicker yarn. And I feel like all my woven-in yarn ends are highly visible (they likely are not but I'm definitely aware of them).



In the end a cute shrug, but far too casual for a wedding I think (also tattoo pretty much visible through it...) in that plain stockinette. The drama factor I was hoping for with the collar didn't really pan out in the somewhat drapier yarn.

I think I might have to stick to a lace pattern if I am indeed going to go the shrug-route. But for now I'm going to hold off a bit.

Plus it's almost SUMMER...I have more relevant things to knit like uh, mittens:


(why I suddenly became obsessed with having to knit these I have no idea, but I'm glad I did and they are WAY cute)

and scarves...





Just when I thought I was getting somewhere on this last one I got to the middle section in the pattern that states: "now carry on in this ribbing for 47 inches". SAY WHAT???? 47 inches before I can even begin the final 3 feet???? I thought it HAD to be a type-o.

Nope. I went back and checked out the final measurements. You are supposed to knit this scarf for NINE FEET. Presumably so that there is lots of length to tie it into a bow, but come on. Ugh this is going to be a long-ass slog. See you in September.

Just kidding. All this scarf knitting is peripherary as far as I'm concerned. I'm currently debating on what sweater project to sink my teeth into. And some hats.

Essentially I plan to ignore the fact the summer's coming and continue to knit like it's still winter. Suck on that one mother nature.

new shrug city

I promise you people --NO wedding talk. Especially given that this thing is a year away...how sick of me would you be?
Ummm except I have to mention the wedding where it pertains to knitting, right?

My quest to find a dress with some kind of cute, sassy sleeve (i.e flutter sleeve, or shorter "puff" sleeve NOT wrist-length mormon-esque LACE sleeve ugh ugh ugh!) is apparently tantamount to finding the HOLY GRAIL in a mall. I don't want to knit a shrug to go with a sleeveless dress...I don't really even like shrugs.

Yet, here I am --in full-on "just in case" mode.

So to wit, shrug experiment #1:


note excellent tattoo coverage!

but quoiiii? (not sure if you could tell but I couldn't even be bothered to weave in the ends). Also note, that is *not* my wedding dress. I'm still hunting. I do have a green dress as a back-up (I am not so into white...) and this was one of THREE I bought from J.Crew. It arrived that day, I tried it on with the shrug, took those pics, boxed it up and sent it back. It was too big (note major bra-less boob gappage). And also, there is not a strapless bra in the world that will help me with a strapless dress I don't think. Anyway, TBD. Ummm, am I talking about my boobs a lot lately?

I figure at the very least I'll be able to shove it in my purse and have it on hand when trying on other sleeveless dresses --reagrdless of whether it's even close to what I need or want.

Here's how I did it. I knit and blocked a lace scarf comme ça:






ok, maybe kinda too short to function as a true scarf for me...

yarn: 1 skein of Butterfly 100% mercerized cotton Super 10 (colour #3727)
needles: 4 & 4.5mm

The pattern was simply stolen bits from here and there. Let's call her Frankenstein, shall we?

I Cast on 56 stitches and knit 4 rows in garter stitch (on the smaller needles).
I then switched to the larger needles and knit using the lace pattern found HERE..."Convertible" from knitty.com (also adding K2 at the beginning and end of each row). Though I will still spell it out for you here:

lace pattern:
Row 1 [RS]: K2 [K2, skp, k4, k2tog, k2, yo, k1, yo] to last 2 sts, K2.
Even-numbered Rows 2-12 [WS]: P all sts.
Row 3 [RS]: K2 [Yo, k2, skp, k2, k2tog, k2, yo, k3] to last 2 sts, K2.
Row 5 [RS]: K2 [K1, yo, k2, skp, k2tog, k2, yo, k4] to last 2 sts, K2.
Row 7 [RS]: K2 [Yo, k1, yo, k2, skp, k4, k2tog, k2] to last 2 sts, K2.
Row 9 [RS]: K2 [K3, yo, k2, skp, k2, k2tog, k2, yo] to last 2 sts, K2.
Row 11 [RS]: K2 [K4, yo, k2, skp, k2tog, k2, yo, k1] to last 2 sts, K2.
Repeat these 12 rows for Lace Pattern.
(from Vogue Knitting, 1989 edition)

I essentially just repeated the lace pattern until it was as long as I wanted it (around 25 inches maybe?) and then knit another 4 rows in garter stitch (on smaller needles again)and bound off. You can then just seam the arms up as high as you need/want and weave in your ends.

Now, I wish I could say this was all MY genius idea, but the reality is that I was inspired by someone else on Ravelry who clearly has the same wedding/tattoo dilemmas as I do:


ravelry username: kellyrelish

And uh, look how FREAKIN' gorgeous she (and shrug) turned out on her wedding day! She gave me hope that this could be done.

So, I mean regardless of whether I even end up going with a pattern like this (right now I'm saying likely not...) it's still spurring me on with the potential possibilities.

So much so that I've cast on for another shrug, and we'll see how that one goes.


(note Starbucks "knit" mugs I picked up for Mother's Day...clearance-- woot!)

In more annoying news though: I am on a knitting hiatus right now. I'm not sure what I've done to my right wrist (please God not carpel tunnel!) but I'm in pain. I'm hoping that knitting is not the cause, just the aggravation and that a proper rest will cure it. Even typing this right now is sending my arm into spasm.

As such it might be a while before I can crank out any new knits for the blog (hopefully not, but you never know..). I might have to actually pick up a BOOK for once. (Since I began knitting a couple of years ago my voracious appetite for reading has been seriously quelled, and I seem to be limiting myself solely to the half-hour in bed prior to passing out cold!)

Why must we suffer for our art? ;)

Hooters sweater

Yup it's a Hooters sweater. Because of the owls? I suppose...but more because it makes my bazooms look gigantic.


(I promise you, in real life they are more distracting --um, in this sweater that is)

And I'm a d-cup as it is, so I definitely do not need them looking any bigger...I'm really more of a "play them down" type than a sweater-girl type. When I wear V-neck sweaters I often worry that I am "busting out". Boobs are a serious pain in the ass to me.



I will stop talking about my boobs now and give you the deets:
pattern: Owls by Katie Davies
yarn: Sirdar Tweedie Chunky in "Cedar" (6 balls? maybe a bit more...) --I knit the s/m (3rd size in)
needles: 6.5mm

So I mean what can I say...the pattern is free and "owls" have been the new black in the indie craft world for years now I would venture. Really, aren't they done? Owls are the new fawns? Owls are the old Octopii? I dunno. Cute animals...who can get enough, really? About 800 people on ravelry have knit this sweater.

Check out this version:


(adorable! from EricaG on ravelry)

Fortunately it was a fun and fast knit, with very little finishing. Sort of. Sewing on the thirty six button eyes was an entire evening's work. I despise sewing on even ONE button, so this was not a task I enjoyed.

In the end though, still a cute sweater...just incredibly unflattering on me --the curse of the chunky yarn (when will I learn?). I couldn't be bothered to block it, which may have helped in that regard, and the dark green tweed was difficult to photograph with any real success in the details. Still, there are so many of them knit on ravelry that there is no shortage to look at.



I tried to go for a green button that would essentially blend--I pretty much do this with all buttons/sweaters...after all that knitting I never want the buttons to somehow beome a focal point!



Knitting a sweater top up really limits your ability to try it on as well. I added an extra inch in the length of the body. Not a good idea in the end. My sweater is virtually a crotch-covering tunic. Even the arms wound up being longer than anticipated, even though I was endlessly trying them on as I went.

Now the question remains: to frog or not to frog? I think it may still be a banging around the house go-to sweater. However now that it's done, I definitely know that I don't have enough yarn leftover to complete this:



and really, given the unflattering nature of the yarn itself, could I even be bothered to put that yarn towards ANY other sweater? le sigh.

I think whatever's left of that wool is destined to become hats and mitts...

Julia probably has the right idea: use a thinner yarn and knit a larger size. I am presently trying to employ this principle in a winter shrug I am attempting to "summer-ify". Shrug experiment number 2 that is. But more on that to come.