Friday, my fine friend, you have been a long time coming this week. And by the way, ANYONE WHO RECEIVED AN EMAIL NOTIFYING YOU OF A BAG PATTERN POST THAT DOESN’T YET EXIST, PLEASE SEE THE END OF THIS POST!
Anyway, the Knitting And Crochet Guild / Yarn Stories competition is closing. Did you enter? Best o’ luck if you did. I can’t wait to see everyone’s entries when they’re shown online.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, the Knitting and Crochet Guild promotes both crafts within the UK and also houses a collection of historical and modern samples of knitted/crocheted objects, as well as yarn and associated paraphernalia. Anyone with a passion for these crafts can join, whether you’ve been knitting/hooking for a week or a century. The competition involved designing and working a 15cm square in either knitting or crochet, with a design inspired by artefacts in the collection. The best entries are apparently going to be sewn together to make a blanket, and the winner will receive lots of luscious Yarn Stories yarn.
Anyway, being more than a little in love with stranded colourwork, I was drawn to this image of a higgledy-piggledy pile of intricate fairisle jumpers. Some of the colour combinations are maybe reminiscent of decades past, but the designs are timeless, and I decided to try and capture both of these elements in my entry. Perhaps I should have spotted that this was quite ambitious in a little square 36 stitches by 45 stitches. Oh well, you live and learn… or possibly just live, in my case.
First, to the yarn. I chose some Yarn Stories merino double knit in a combination of shades inspired by the ’70s.
And then I got out some knitter’s graph paper and began to doodle, and erase, and doodle, and erase, and fetch green tea, and doodle, because I love the fun and the freedom of creating stranded designs. And eventually the green tea ran out, and I came up with this:-
The problem is, I decided to go a bit off piste with the whole colourwork malarkey, and instead of sticking to a cosy, sensible two shades per row, I used up to four shades per row, and worked a sort of stranded-intarsia hybrid (“strandtarsia”??) that made for some – ahem – not especially tidy knitting. Don’t try this at home, people: it will hurt your fingers and it will hurt your brain. But how else was a girl to cram a world of orange-laden 1970s shades into one small square? So here we have it (after a certain amount of swearing): my tiny take on the Guild’s penchant for fairisle jumpers:-
And though I’d usually show you the back of a piece of stranded work because, y’know, the Knitting Police demand that you show off your ultra-neat floats, I think I’ll pass on doing that just now, and show you another shot of the front instead:-
Yikes, please don’t look closely. I used intarsia to keep the three strong colours all within the outline of the jumper, and worked a mad jumble of twisted floats as I tried to marshal the chaos into an identifiable representation of a jumper.
I Will Not Be Doing This Again.
Meanwhile thank you for your kind comments about the IVF after my last entry. Posts may continue to be a bit more infrequent than usual for another month or so, after which time, normal regular silliness will return.
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Now, for anyone who subscribes to this blog by email, you will have received a message a few days ago saying there’s a new post up with the crochet house bag pattern inside. But had you clicked on the link, you’d have seen nothing much of anything other than a load of ellipses and drafted notes. I was working on the pattern and accidentally hit ‘publish’. Yikes! I clawed back the post, I clawed back notifications from every social medium out there, but the one thing I couldn’t retrieve was the messages sent out automatically by email. Apologies. Blame my IVF brain. The pattern is coming soonish, but it needs a goodish chunk more work before it’ll be done.
slippedstitches says
June 6, 2015 at 2:24 amI love it. And yes stranded can be used in the same pattern as intarsia. I know what you mean about the knitting police and weaving in yarn ends. I was at a rather larger gathering of well-known knitters when I was just getting into the craft and one came over to me, asked me to take off my sweater so she could inspect the reverse side. That traumatic little experience has made me fanatical about how I weave in ends so they can’t be seen.
The Twisted Yarn says
June 6, 2015 at 9:28 amYikes! I’m feeling vicariously traumatised just from reading that! I hope your woven in ends were up to standard? 😉
slippedstitches says
June 6, 2015 at 3:56 pmShe had a some suggestions which I still follow today.
arlingwoman says
June 6, 2015 at 2:47 amThis is a very clever little square. Perhaps I should say cunning. I love the insight into the creative process you show. Given what Slippedstitches says, though, you may want to back that square! Y’all are hard on each other! 😉
cricketfox says
June 6, 2015 at 3:22 amThat turned out really cute
Nicky Barfoot says
June 6, 2015 at 6:10 amLove that quirky little design.
Gail says
June 6, 2015 at 7:55 amIt looks great, and sending positive thoughts for you re your IVF x
atelieroursonne says
June 6, 2015 at 8:29 amThis is amazing. And it looks as if all together it took about the same time than the glass window afghan who got me once hooked to this blog 🙂
Good luck with the IVF
debgarretty says
June 6, 2015 at 10:01 amFabulous entry for the competition. As someone who was a teenager in the 1970s, I can vouch that the colours are just right. Lots of luck. Your comments about the back made me smile. Many a time I had to endure disapproving looks from a very crafty friend who was obsessed with the reverse side of any project. Life’s too short. If it’s neat, that’s a bonus!
jackallcraft says
June 6, 2015 at 10:29 amI love how you cme up with creative and different ways to use well known techniques and represent well known products in alternative forms. You’re very clever!
nanacathy2 says
June 6, 2015 at 10:29 amBest of luck, it’s amazing
Sharon - creativityandfamily says
June 6, 2015 at 2:59 pmThat is so clever and cute. I did make a square but then read the rules properly and I hadn’t made a pattern so that is as far as it got!
Yvonne Dalzell says
June 6, 2015 at 9:07 pmLove your twist on the design element. By making your swatch a variant of the normal run of the mill fair isle pattern. A fun and vibrant idea.
narf77 says
June 7, 2015 at 6:43 amSo we don’t get to see the back eh? ;). What I want to know is that after that string of Japanese that you typed up (lost me after the word “Intarsia”) is how you got that jumper to look jumper shaped without an outline? It must be some sort of optical illusion. Very 70’s. I think my aunty knitted me a jumper just like that when I was a kid on one of her knitting machines. It went perfectly with the avocado toilet suite 😉
northmelbournemum says
June 8, 2015 at 1:47 pmLove it – fantastic!
Katie Writes Stuff says
June 9, 2015 at 4:07 amIt looks absolutely adorable!
Serenova says
June 9, 2015 at 7:06 pmSooo… where does one find knitting graph paper?
The Twisted Yarn says
June 9, 2015 at 9:06 pmIf you Google it, you can find various sites that provide it for free. Then you can print sheets. It allows for the fact that knit stitches are generally wider than they are tall. 🙂
Serenova says
June 9, 2015 at 10:14 pmThank you very much!
Gillian says
June 10, 2015 at 10:39 amI love your 70’s jumper square. I remember those colours well!