Dear Kaffe,
I think that you have known for some time now that I love you and your colours. I think that you are a genius.
A Kaffe Fassett intarsia design
But you are an evil, twisted genius.
26 individual bobbins of yarn for your tangling pleasure.
Lots of love,
Mimi xxx
I love knitting stitch dictionaries. They are perhaps my greatest knitting weakness. I can spend (literally) hours leafing through the same pages over and over before beginning a new projects, armed with a selection of sticky-tab page-markers as I whittle down what I think will ‘work’, first marking about 20 or so for further consideration, maybe picking five of these, then going back over the book and falling in love another 20 stitches I didn’t even notice the first time around, rinse and repeat.
So, when I noticed that the Harmony Guide series had a new book in town, and it just so happened to concentrate on my new found love of colourwork stitches, I was clicking my way through the appropriate Amazon pages within a heartbeat.
I then waited, and waited. I know today is only the 7th of January, and we are experiencing some exceptional weather conditions, but I ordered the book last year, and it was supposed to arrive by the next working day. Finally though, the book arrived.
The Harmony Guide to Colourwork, attending a family reunion.
There is so much I love about this book. It is clear, well photographed and uncluttered. The designs are clearly charted. The book begs to be flicked through, then orders you to make a cup of tea and then flicked through again. The edition distributed in the U.K. has a ‘u’ in the title. Great stuff.
It isn’t perfect, though. Like the other Harmony guides I own it seems to suffer from a lack of organisation. The Harmony guides start off in a logical manner – the easiest stitches of the particular type being categorised coming first. A simple openwork pattern begins the guide to lace. A progression from garter stitch, to stockinette, reverse stockinette and k1, p1 rib gets the Knit and Purl guide off to an obvious start, and so it is with the colourwork guide. Single dots on a plain background, placed one stitch apart. Single dots on a plain background placed two stitches apart, two coloured stitches on a plain… you get the idea. This very quickly ascends a learning curve into more complex patterns – bands of motifs, various snowflake designs of Norweigan colourwork, intarsia designs, but, inexplicably, possibly the simplest colourwork technique of them all – evenly proportioned stripes, isn’t found until page 200.
individual designs are well laid out and easy to follow
There also doesn’t seem to be (or at least I can not discern) any logic to the groupings of stitch examples. Examples of snowflake designs are scattered throughout the publication, instead of being grouped together, traditional Fair Isle motifs are inter-spaced by designs that used four or more colours per row (shudder). At least the publishers sought to keep the letters of the alphabet together and in the traditional order.
Once you get used to the idea that you will have to look through the entire guide each time you are searching for something though, you start to regard this as a pleasurable pursuit rather than a chore standing between you and your latest project, and that’s what I am about to do. I have a good friend waiting to help choose some colours and motifs for his new sweater…
I have always wanted a Fair Isle tank top. Really.
for my grandad
A few months ago the wonderful UK knitting magazine Yarn Forward published a series of patterns for mystery blankets squares, 6 each month, which were shown only as charts or written instructions, with no pictures of how the finished squares would look. I thought this would be a good project for me as the mixture of lace, cables, colourwork, beading and textured squares would mean a lot of variety within the project, allowing the knitter to end up with relatively large finished object without too much boredom. As each square was to be 8×8″ in size, it was quite easy to see that there was a large scope for making your own aditional squares. I picked my colour palette (various browns and creams, and a pale turquoise) and cast on for my first squares.
I always like to have a blanket for comfort, so I decided to make this as a treat for myself, but soon my knitting had to be put aside for a while after the death of my beloved grandfather at the age of 97. I could not knit for a while, because my time knitting is a time when I can afford myself time to think, and to contemplate, and I could not bare to have that quiet reflective time when I was grieving.
When the occasion of the funeral had passed I slowly picked up my needles for time to time and dabbled in a square. Knitting became a comfort, as I hoped my blanket would be, but the thing I needed comforting from most was the loss my family had recently suffered.
I started to think of how I would like to knit a square in memory of my grandad, and how I would like it to symbolise what I loved about him. He was my father figure, mentor, teacher and greatest supporter. When I was young he’d take me anywhere I wanted to go – to the park, to the museum, to ride my bike. He’d fix the punctures in my tyres as well as the graze on my knee. One of the thing he’d love to do most was to go out and watch wild birds. He bought a heavy old pair of binoculars and we’d walk through fields, parks, woodlands – wherever we could find them. He’d explain about their songs, their migration paths, and we’d sketch them as he whistled their tunes back to them.
One of his favourite British wild birds was the bluetit, and I thought that this would make a fitting tribute to my beautiful grandfather.
I’d already picked out my colour palette for the blanket, so some artistic license had to be taken with the colours, but as my box of crayons was always missing a few colours and we used what we could to make our sketches, I didn’t think he’d mind.
I think he’d have loved this design if he was still alive, but I also think he’d like me to have shared it, because he’d always want more of his feathered friends in the world.
A larger version of the chart can be viewed here. Extra plain rows can be added to the top or bottom of the chart if you wish to knit it into a square.
Charles James Henry Stiff. 1912-2009. ♥
Many modern knitters will be accustomed to the feeling of expectation surrounding the postman’s next visit, hoping that it will bring some yarn, or some other knitterly goodies in the next delivery. Not many people could have experienced a delivery of this magnitude, though:
I parted with actual money for this
Wit Knits, published 1986, is a catalogue of evil. Actually, it was this blog that was the cause and catalyst of me first learning and then spending good money, which could have gone towards some nice jaffa cakes, on this little snapshot of knitwear in the 80s. When writing about the trouble with colour I started considering who, to me, epitomised colourful knitwear – and Gyles Brandreth, English eccentric and television wit, pushed himself to the forefront of my mind. Googling Gyles Brandreth’s jumpers led me to discover that not only was he a patron of paintbox-knitwear, he actually published a collection of ‘lively and original hand-knitting designs’, all of which are modelled by British stars of stage and screen from a time now gone by. I present to you, for your enjoyment, Wit Knits.
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This is but a smattering of the 37 wonderful designs for you to knit and cherish. Should you wish to see them all, or even knit one for your beloved, Wit Knits is available from Abe Books for not much money.
Yesterday I posted about a quirky little typeface I found one day and about its uses for design and layouts for knitterly folk, but also the possibility of it perhaps working as a quick and easy way to generate charts for knitted words.
Using the graphic I made yesterday, I managed to knit this (please excuse the untidy sample, I only had 15 minutes to knit this in and it hasn’t been blocked or had its stitches manipulated into submission).
I prefer to call it 'rustic'
I think it is readable and attractive, and due to the relatively equal width/height of the characters and the fact that there are no large blocks of colour, it works very well in stranded knitting. So – if you give an infinite number of knitting needles to an infinite number of monkeys, how long will it take for one of them to knit Hamlet?
A while ago I was wandering merrily through Internetland, watching balls of wool skip happily through the meadows, scampering around the giant cones of yarn, whilst listening to the gentle soothing sound of the needles clicking away in the trees when I stumbled upon Knitfont. I picked myself back up and considered this cute little font for a few minutes. It was a simple idea, but perfectly done, and available in two different forms – knitted letters on a plain background or white letters on a knitted background.
Knitfont has both 'positive' and 'negative' styles
Both quite attractive in themselves, but I think the effect is most pleasing when you use both together. If you have a graphics program that uses layers, such as Photoshop, you can use both versions in different colours to layer one on top of the other to fit them together:
The two styles of knitfont combined
I used this same idea to create the ‘Eskimimi Knits’ graphic at the top of the page, and I think it could come in handy for making gift tags or washing instructions tags for knitted items and in many other applications.
I think the question that begs to be asked is – Can you use it for lettering in colourwork? I haven’t tried it myself, yet, but it’s something I keep meaning to give a go. I do not think that it is the intended purpose of the font – I think it may have been created purely for decorative value, but I think it is worth experimenting with so I’m gong to give it a go. I’ll post the results soon.
‘Knitfont’ by Honey and Death can be downloaded free of charge from here.
