A short post today, because world events have got me down.
I have been fooling around with a new project. It involves lettering, and the knitted word. Here you can see the swatch, and other bits and bobs of the knitting process:
I think it’s quite cool, and fun to knit. I have to concentrate on knitting the words, but there is a lot of stockinette as well, so it lends itself to both tv knitting and focused knitting. The coral against the green works perfectly and feels crisp and spring-like. I am powering through:
Despite the act of knitting words, I am lost for words.
It’s been a while since I wrote a Pattern Radar post. There is a simple reason behind this: they take a lot of work. Putting in the photos and the links and copyright information and double-checking everything is fiddly. I normally choose between 8 and 12 new patterns that have caught my fancy in some way, and then put together the post. Since I wait until I have a fair number of patterns to discuss, this sometimes gets in the way of my original intention which is to show new stuff that is exciting, or interesting, or eye-catching. So, I have decided on a new plan: to make more frequent Pattern Radar posts, each focusing on between 2 – 5 patterns. Here, to kick it off, are three very different shawl patterns that have been released within the past week.
You know how sometimes you click through endless patterns, thinking “same old, same old”? Well, this is one of those patterns that literally made me sit up and think. It caught my eye because it is pretty, but then my brain cells immediately started thinking “how is it constructed?” A partial answer: It is initially knitted in the round, using a “no purl” garter technique, with the wreaths knitted back and forth. That is a very simplistic description; check out the pattern and read the notes to get a better idea. However it’s done, it is beautiful, and very unique, and feels full of colour and life.
Norah Gaughan has just released a new pattern book, called Knit Fold Pleat Repeat. The patterns all involve folding and pleating knitted fabric in innovative ways. It is incredibly imaginative and thoughtful. I remember so well buying Norah’s book Knitting Nature in 2006 and being blown away by her architectural approach to knitting and her sensitivity to shapes, patterns, geometries, and nature. Her work is characterised by playfulness and a unique way of taking an idea and pushing it outwards and sideward and inside out. (Kate Davies recently wrote about how Norah’s work on Twisted Stitches has inspired her own design process.) Floret is just one of the many cool patterns in the book, but it is one that really caught my eye.
I really love the combination of stranded knitting, bold geometric patterning, and use of colour in this shawl. It’s got a nice “pop” to it, but still has a softness. It’s one of those patterns that tricks the eye: if you look at it one way you see the anemones, big and gorgeous and flowery; but then you blink and what you see are angles and lines and circles, laid out like geometric tilework. I particularly like the coral edging on the cream and blue section, as opposed to the cream edging on the coral and blue section. It’s a small detail, but very effective.
There you have it: three very different shawls that caught my eye this week. Good knitting, everyone!
Last weekend, I flew to Copenhagen to visit my friend, Erun. I took a bunch of knitting with me, as I expected we would be lazy all weekend. We were mostly lazy all weekend, but I didn’t knit a single stitch!
We did a lot of walking: we walked 12 km on the Saturday and 10 on the Sunday. We went to a museum. We went to two yarn shops. We bought fish at the market. We went out to eat a nice Nordic meal, and Erun cooked me a fantastic dinner. That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? In truth, we were both pretty much exhausted, and when we weren’t walking I was collapsed on the couch, unable to contemplate moving, much less knitting. Erun has a new job, I am super busy at work, and we had almost no sleep while I was there. Not, I might add, due to us partying all night, but due to other people (lots of them) partying all night in the building across the street.
You can see in the above photo that I am wearing a new knitted hat. You may recall that I bought some yarn on my last trip to Helsinki (which I blogged about here). This included two balls of Puf by Gepard Garn in a green shade. In the shop, they had a sample knitted up as a hat and I asked for the pattern, which they gave me, typed out on a piece of paper, in Finnish. I was fairly confident that I could translate it, but I lost it, so the point was moot. So I just knitted a hat, without a pattern:
This is not my favorite hat, not by a long shot, but in the interests of documenting projects on my blog, I include it here. It can be worn with the brim turned up, as in the above photos, or with the brim down, in which case the hat is more slouchy:
If you are in Copenhagen, you might visit the Copenhagen Contemporary, where we saw the exhibit Light and Space, which is on until the 4th of September. It was quite an enjoyable exhibit and very well laid out. The extra high ceilings and big rooms of the space meant that you could walk around and interact with the art in a pleasing way. Here is Erun engaging with a piece by Olafur Eliasson:
There were two exhibits we especially liked. One was by Ann Linn Palm Hansen. Below is a photo which gives you a sense of the size.
The part that really captivated me were the blue canvases on the left, which at first glance I thought contained Chinese characters. If you magnify the shot, you may get a sense of how whimsical and cool these canvases are.
We were really taken by an exhibit of James Turrell’s Roden Crater, which I had not heard of before. There were photos, and models, and a short film about it, and it was completely mesmerizing. He basically took an old volcano in Arizona and turned it into a fantastic piece of art, exploring light and space. (Even that sentence seems amazing. Check it out.)
As always, Copenhagen is lovely. It has such pretty colours; even on a grey day, it is cheery.
We resisted floating along the harbour in a hot tub, but it strikes me as quintessentially Copenhagen:
It was good to see Erun, to be back in Copenhagen, and to do so much walking. But this weekend, I am really, truly going to do nothing. Except knit, of course.
