Knit & Knag Designs

I finally gave in and decided to get myself a twitter account for quicky little updates that usually don’t get their own blogposts. I can be found here and I will endavour to tweet reasonably often and yet never about my laundry or housecleaning efforts.
So pop in, and introduce youself. I’d love some company in the tweeting-world.

I spent the last few days in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and it was absolutely fabulous. In many ways it reminds me of Gothenburg, Sweden where I grew up.  Both are large and active harbours.  And it was really nice to get a chance to spend time by the Atlantic Ocean, and of course eat tons and tons of delicious seafood.

While I was there, I had the opportunity to visit the Handmaiden Studio and got to see their dyeing operations, as well as some fabulous yarns of course.  I arrived early in the morning (well…. around 9, which is early when you are on vacation), because I had been forewarned that the studio gets very hot as the day goes on.  And that seemed to be a very accurate assessment – it was toasty already.

There was all sorts of (Handmaiden) yarn in all sorts of colours, and one of my favourite parts to see was a wall with sample skeins in a number of the official colourways.  Handmaiden doesn’t typically label their skeins with colours, since no two skeins are ever going to be identical.  After all, all of them are unique and handmade.  At the same time there are a number of colours that are more official than others, and that serve as the target for the dyers, and it was really nice to see such a wide variety.

Another part that I found very interesting was the shelves of “one offs” or more unusual colourways that don’t look like any of the official ones.  There were lots of really nice looking colours here as well, that do get distributed as well, but it seems that the chances of finding those exact colours again are small indeed.

While I was there, they dyed me a special batch of Sea Sock to take home and transform into a lace shawl, and I’ve been plotting and scheming for the pattern since then.  Of course the yarn wasn’t quite dry when I left the studio, but a few hours hanging in the hotel room draped over the shower curtain rod took care of that.

After visiting the Handmaiden Studio, I continued on to the historical Hydrostones area.  The area was build up after the Halifax explosion destroyed all the wooden houses that used to house the workmens’ families.  After the explosion they were rebuild using concrete blocks covered in crushed granite.  The stone construction made for a more fire proof building material than wood…..  The very first shop I saw was:

LK Yarns – so of course I had to stop in for a visit and look at all their fabulous yarns.  Being Nova Scotia, there was of course a wonderful selection of both Fleece Artist and Handmaiden yarn, but also a lot of other goodies.  I had a delightful chat with the owner, and she was showing me a number of beautiful shawls she’d knit up.  At the moment she is knitting Citron (from Knitty) in a dark pink yarn from malabrigo, and it’s looking great.  I was sorely tempted by a number of yarns in store, but managed to restrain myself to a skein of Fleece Artist – Saldanha in a dark blue colour.

And as if this wasn’t enough yarny goodness for a post – when I got back home last night there was a package from Knitting Iceland awaiting me.  It contained a sample of their lace yarn – “Love Story” which will be available this fall.  Right now it’s a natural white, but I’m told that it will be available in a number of colours, all naturally dyed with plants.  It’s a very soft version of Icelandic wool, and I’m very excited to get to try it.

I decided that it would be fun to learn a new knitting technique, so a little while ago I purchased “Knitting Brioche” by Nancy Marchant.  This week I finally had the chance to sit down and play a little.  It turned out to be quite fun, and I’m definitely going to have to experiment a little more with this technique.  Basically when you work a row you only work every other stitch.  The other stitch is slipped, but instead of putting the working yarn in front of the slipped stitch (like with linen stitch) or behind the stitch (like in Mosaic knitting) you put the yarn over the stitch and the needle, so you are creating a yarn over on top of the stitch.  On the next row you knit (or purl) the yarn over and the stitch together as one stitch, and slip the stitches worked in the previous row while creating another yarn over on top of it.
Nancy’s book is filled with illustrations to make this process eminently clear.
Because you’re essentially working each row twice, with the yarn running along the row twice, the fabric becomes thicker than regular knitting.
The brioche book was filled with a number of new abbreviations, for the brioche stitches.  My favorites by far was brk1 (brioche knit one stitch) and brp1 (brioche purl one stitch) – because in my mind they came out as “bark one” and “burp one”.  :-).  So I may not be a master briocher just yet, but I have barked and burped aplenty in the past few days, and I have a few swatches and a piece of a scarf to prove it.

I have spent the past several days reading Shannon Okey’s new book – The Knitgrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design and it has been nothing if not enjoyable.

The first half of the book gives a comprehensive overview of what you need to know in order to write, test, publish and market patterns.  And as most designers know; there are a whole host of issues that come with being self employed, and the book does not gloss over that aspect at all.  As a professional designer, you cannot spend all your time knitting and designing, but there is a fair amount of marketing, accounting, book keeping and “other” miscellaneous items that demand your attention.  Shannon’s book is full of practical advice, including tips on accounting software, copyright issues, publishing, distribution, marketing and how to make sales.

The second half of the book contains a number of interviews with established designers.  I really like the fact that not all the interviewees are asked the same questions, but they have an opportunity to muse on what is important to them.  Everyone has their own take on what is important, and everyone has different goals they are trying to achieve, and I think the interviews reflect that.  There is something there for everyone.

I can definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in becoming a knitwear designer, or anyone who is interested in what goes on “behind the scenes”.