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Blog EntriesTNNA Recap (Mostly in photos)
Posted on | June 24, 2010 | 4 Comments
I think I waited too long to post about TNNA because my memory of it is getting a little fuzzy…kind of like what happened after my wedding. The images are there, but somehow the narrative escapes me. So I’ll rely mostly on my somewhat blurry cell phone photos to tell the tale of my whirlwind weekend at my first TNNA.
The weekend before TNNA, I was in Ithaca to visit friends and to go to Ithaca Festival, the town’s celebration (or at least it seemed that way to us when we were students) of the fact that Ithaca belonged to its residents again after another school year of undergrad and grad student invasion. While in Ithaca, I visited my favorite LYS, Knitting Etc, and Hickory, its owner and my friend, suggested that I sell my patterns wholesale to yarn shops through Deep South Fibers. It’s something I’ve thought about, but the logistics of printing the patterns, keeping them in storage, contacting yarn shops, etc, just filled me with dread; working with Deep South Fibers seemed to eliminate most of those worries. And in the week before TNNA, I quickly gathered my wits about me and worked with the nice folks at Deep South Fibers to get my patterns and photos in their hands so that I could be introduced (along with Grannycore) at TNNA. So yarn shop owners, if you’re interested in carrying my print patterns in your shop, please contact Deep South Fibers or go to my page on their website for more information.
Here’s my poster in their booth. I found them quite quickly on Saturday when the show opened:
Melissa LaBarre and Kristen TenDyke; fortifying ourselves for a full show day with some breakfast at the hotel:
Kristen Rengren and Mercedes T-Clark at the Malabrigo Booth:
Tanis, manning the Be Sweet booth:
Tea time at Ysolda’s booth (with Anne Hanson and Clara Parkes!):
Another shot of Ysolda’s booth, which was manned by Ysolda and her lovely assistant Sarah, who made the space so welcoming to all who entered:
And Jess, trying on my Sabbatical sample (which lived in Ysolda’s booth along with several other samples from past Twist issues):
Finally, a little mysterious package from Quince yarns, a new company from the brilliant designing minds of Pam Allen and Carrie Bostick Hoge!
Drive By Posting (re: TNNA)
Posted on | June 16, 2010 | 14 Comments
I’ll do a proper post about the weekend soon, but for now, I wanted to share a sneak peek of a new design I have coming out in Classic Elite’s upcoming Fall pattern booklets. I caught a glimpse of this on Saturday at Classic Elite’s TNNA booth.
It’s a bulky weight hoodie coat (with knitted in toggles) made out of Ariosa, a very lofty large gauge yarn. Because of the way Ariosa is spun, there is a lot of yardage per 50 grams. So, despite the bulky gauge, this coat is amazingly light.
And my design made the cover! I think this is my first cover project 
Be back soon with more!
TNNA
Posted on | June 10, 2010 | 3 Comments
Off to Columbus and TNNA tomorrow. I’ll be hanging around Ysolda’s booth and otherwise just walking around. Hope to see some of you there!
Hand Knit Design as Art
Posted on | June 1, 2010 | 4 Comments
A couple of months ago, Jared Flood brought together several hand knit designers for a very unique designing project for ESOPUS magazine, a journal put out by a local, non-profit organization featuring art that spans a variety of fields and mediums.
Photos taken by and used with permission from Jared Flood.
I was the second designer to get the project after my friend, Tanis, worked on the bottom band. Theoretically, I think we weren’t supposed to see (and thus be influenced) by the pieces that came before us, but for a sweater, that’s a very difficult criteria to achieve. So I got the unenviable (unenviable because Tanis is a hard act to follow!) task of picking up stitches from Tanis’ creative, sculptural feat of knitting for my piece. Ten points to anyone who can guess which part I knit 
without peeking at Jared’s schematic.
It was really quite freeing to be able to knit without worrying about writing down notes or whether it would size up or down correctly or even whether the gauge needed to exactly so. And I’m honored to be included in the company of those involved with the project: Melissa LaBarre, Carrie Bostick Hoge, Tanis Gray, Elli Stubenrauch, Cookie A, and of course, our fearless leader, Jared Flood
Jared wrote about the process more in depth on his blog.
Playing Photographer for a Day
Posted on | May 31, 2010 | 4 Comments
This post is long overdue, but I’m finally getting around to writing about this gorgeous cardigan Melissa Wehrle released several months ago. Melissa’s husband and photographer was unavailable for several weeks so she asked me to photograph her modeling her Cohansie Cardigan (available on its own and as part of her first collection).
Because it was still winter in NYC, we decided to photograph her in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts. With Maurizio in tow, we quickly scouted locations in the huge museum and quickly settled on The Charles Engelhard Court, a garden court with architectural and sculpture pieces (and a fair bit of natural light), including several examples of Tiffany glass pictures.
I think I did a serviceable job of capturing a fraction of the beauty of Melissa’s cardigan, but I certainly gained a new-found appreciation for how difficult it is to take good photographs of handknits. The various concerns the photographer must juggle — compositon, light, showing the unique elements of a design — all while trying to take a good photograph from an artistic point of view…let’s just say that I made sure to take many many photos in the hopes that among them lurked a handful that Melissa could use.
It was a fun day and I think the Metropolitan Museum is a great venue for a handknit design photo session. Other places we considered were the Frick and the Whitney; but both museums seemed to prohibit photography on the premises, a fact that surprised me a bit. I know that generally museums don’t allow photography in their special exhibits, but I thought most permitted it in their permanent collection; especially if no flash is used.
On a personal note, I was excited for Melissa to release this pattern. It’s an in-one-piece raglan with the button bands knit at the same time and the sleeves worked in one piece. Plus, Melissa invented a cool stitch pattern that bands the sweater throughout. It’s one of the most interesting handknit sweaters I’ve seen and yet as always with Melissa’s designs, it’s very wearable.
Sanguine Gryphon’s Dye Camp 2010
Posted on | May 28, 2010 | 4 Comments
This past weekend, I was a participant and teacher at Gryphon’s second annual SG Dye Camp Retreat in Easton, MD. I was so honored that Gryphon asked me to teach at her retreat, especially given how popular it is. She limits the participant list to 30 and holds a lottery to determine who gets to go, but as one of the teachers (joining Gryphon herself as the dye teacher and Lauren Haiken as the spinning teacher), I got an automatic “in” to the camp.
This was my first knitting class, so I was more than a little nervous. I’ve taught physics (mostly classical mechanics, but some atomic physics and electromagnetism too) as a TA in grad school to a variety of undergrad audiences — from engineering majors to premeds, but I’ve never taught a knitting class. And since my class was an introduction to lace sweater design, I was worried it would get too lecture-y; so I tried to include some hands on activities. But I think the students enjoyed it and I tried to cover a variety of topics such as choosing a yarn, the importance of gauge, essential sweater (and body) measurements, and some simple shaping examples. I didn’t quite realize how exhausting it would be to talk to a group of students for 3 hours! As a TA, most of my classes were 50 minutes; except for the lab sections — but for lab, other than a brief 15 minute introduction to the concepts in the beginning, I mostly was present for questions while the students went about their activities.
In turn, I got to attend Gryphon’s 4 hour introduction to dyeing where we learned 5 types of dyeing (solid color, nearly solid, variegated, very variegated, and handpainted) and were given 2 oz skeins of Eidos (!) to practice on. And I took Lauren Haiken’s excellent and informative spinning class — I loved how much of a geek she was about yarn, definitely a woman after my own heart. And here is where the pictures come in…
Here we are, choosing from the line of reference mini-skeins which color of dye (both Jacquard and Dharma dyes were available) to use:
Next, we stir our potent mixture of dye, hot water, vinegar, and handtied skeins:
Here is my lovely dye-mate Linda (we teamed up into groups of 3 with similar color tastes since we’d be sharing the same dye pot for all of our skeins) pulling out one of our skeins from the rinsing bin:
And here’s Elissa, one of Gryphon’s elves (note, Gryphon has several elves who help her with various aspects of her business and they’re all lovely and kind people), putting our skeins into the spinner to get rid of excess water:
And finally, our skeins, fresh from the spinner and hung out to dry overnight (the mint green skeins on the right represent the first efforts of my dye team):
Gryphon demonstrates the last dyeing method, the labor intensive and difficult handpainting yarn:
Along the way there were cute kittens and even cuter kids (Gryphon’s daughter Lia, holding one of 3 grey kittens):
All in all, it was a very fun, very stimulating weekend. I was so thrilled to finally meet Gryphon. We’ve been email buddies for years and it was great fun to have the opportunity to interact with her in person. She’s such a charming, creative person with a wonderful sense of color and style. I hope we’ll get a chance to meet up again soon.
A parting shot… what came home (well, to the office anyway) with me… In addition to my handdye experiments (which are hidden away in the paper bag to the right in the photo) are several skeins of Skinny Bugga (for a future indie design) and some skeins of Bugga, Skinny Bugga, and Eidos for me to play with. We were given a few moments each day to shop, but really, it was just overwhelming to the senses. I kept turning skeins over and over in my hand. Asking me to choose a particular color or yarn base was an impossible task.
To see photos other campgoers took, go to the Flickr pool here.
Knitting on the Brain
Posted on | May 18, 2010 | No Comments
One of the things I find myself invariably doing these days is visiting malls. The town where I work has two huge ones and after I leave the office, it seems a bit depressing to go back to an empty hotel room, so I spend a few minutes each day windowshopping.
Yesterday, I passed by J Crew and saw this fanciful display of scarves:
Don’t they look like skeins of yarn? I’ve always loved J Crew’s color palette – so bright and cheerful – and very preppy of course!
Speaking of yarn, I’ll be teaching a lace sweater design course this weekend at Gryphon’s Dyeing Retreat. I hope I’ll get some great pictures to share… though I am hampered somewhat by the limitations of my camera phone. I’m traveling light these days and the thought of lugging around a camera isn’t too appealing. Maybe I can convince one of the retreat goers to share some photos with me.
Angela and NYC
Posted on | May 18, 2010 | 3 Comments
On Friday, my friend Angela and her husband were in town and they very kindly let Maurizio and me crash their group outing – a boat trip around the harbor in Manhattan. Although we’ve lived in this area for the past 3 years, it’s still quite stunning to see Manhattan from the vantage point of the water.
Me and Angela in the interior of the boat:
And Maurizio and me outside. Since Maurizio’s notoriously camera shy, I’m going to respect his privacy and post one of the photos where he isn’t directly facing the camera:
It’s always good to catch up with Angela, who I met 3 years ago when her family was still living in Como and Maurizio and I were out in Milan to visit his folks. At the time, we both were working on projects for the winter 2007 issue of Interweave Knits and we compared in-progress knits. It was my first design with them so I was giddy with excitement and Angela’s second.
Contemplating Yarn
Posted on | May 14, 2010 | 12 Comments
I’m already thinking of the next indie design and I’m trying to match it up with a good yarn. First up on the table, a bevy of beauties from Sweet Georgia – light green is silk crush sock, dark green is cash silk lace, orange is tough love sock, turquoise is merino silk dk, and the the already wound sea blue cake is merino silk lace.
Other possibilities I’m considering are the always popular Madelinetosh and Sanguine Gryphon, at whose dye workshop retreat I’ll be teaching this coming weekend in Maryland.
I have two ideas I would love to work out. One is a little something to throw over yourself in a chilly, over-air conditioned office, a situation I find myself in a lot these days. The other is a cardigan in a lightweight yarn (can you tell I love cardigans?) for the summer.
More Austin Hoodie
Posted on | May 7, 2010 | 5 Comments
1. Austin Hoodie, 2. Sleeve detail, 3. Sweater Detail, 4. Hood Detail. All photographs courtesy of and property of Parikha and Hemal Mehta.
Ysolda thought I was being a bit stingy with the photos on the last post and suggested I post a few more; a request I’m only too happy to comply with. Again, the lovely Parikha served as both model and photographer, and she couldn’t have done a better job with either. I’m so thrilled with how the photos turned out. There’s a very calm, yoga-like quality to her poses and photo composition, which complements well with the feel I was aiming for with this hoodie cardigan.
I contacted Amy last fall, a couple of months before the Knitscene where I’m profiled was due to come out. I had really enjoyed creating the Geodesic Cardigan and I wanted to design a companion piece to it. I’ve long admired Madelinetosh’s colors in the Ravelry photos of other people’s stashes and Amy’s base yarns were the perfect combination of classic knitterly fibers and special, one-of-a-kind treats. Originally, I was thinking of her Prairie or Tosh Lace to create a drapey fabric similar to the Geodesic. But Amy mentioned that she was developing a new yarn, a lighter version of her very popular Tosh Merino, that she was very excited about and would I be interested in using that instead. I had barely finished reading her description of it before I hit the reply button.
Fortuitously enough, Amy was scheduled to visit NYC before Rhinebeck to give a talk at Knitty City; so I got to meet her, fondle some of her gorgeous yarn, and talk to her in person about my indie design. To my delight, I discovered that Amy’s sweater sensibilities aligned pretty closely with mine — we both prefer comfortable sweaters we can lounge around in; so she was on board with my idea of a casual hoodie cardigan with just a smattering of detail.
I’ve written a bit about my first impressions of Tosh Light before, but I’ll expand on it a bit more now that I’ve worked with it. I’ve always liked the look of single ply yarns, but hated their tendency to pill. I don’t know how it’s possible, but Tosh Light doesn’t seem to pill and it’s sturdier than your average single ply yarn. But it’s the color that really sets Tosh Light apart. Somehow, Amy has managed to make Tosh Light glow. I would have guessed there was some silk content in there, but nope, it’s 100% merino.
I’m really thrilled at the reception that the Austin Hoodie has already gotten. Thanks to Amy for donating the yarn for this project. And of course to Parikha for her gorgeous photos.
One more note about the yarn… Tosh Merino Light isn’t widely available quite yet. Amy included it in her Magolia Society yarn club and has been posting batches of it on her etsy site, but from what I understand, you have to be quite vigilant and ready to pounce as soon as an update goes up. She’s debuting it at TNNA in June and I believe it should make its way to your local yarn shop shortly thereafter.
A few more parting detail shots:
