Knitting Class Mashup
Hi knitters,
You won't see me this week -- I'm in Florida doing some birding and visiting family. Now. As knitters, can you guess what I was doing the night before we left?
If you guessed "1) Going to spinning night at Purlescence, followed by 2) packing, and finally 3) digging through available knitting projects, yarn & books to find *the* perfect knitting to bring with me," you either know me, or we are of the same tribe.
I know knitters who plan ahead for their travels quite carefully (Hi Mom!), but I'm sure I'm not alone in the last minute crazy, right?? Let's hear from a few of my midnight sistren out there! Is there a name for this phenomenon?
Anyway, in a quick post (because the WIFI at this Quality Inn is the suck and we're going birding early tomorrow morning), I invite you to ponder what happens if you take Sally Melville's color stranding / creativity class (taken at Stitches West 2006 - that's my chart above - and this is the resulting swatch...)
and mash it up with the output of a class called "Machine Knitting to Dye For" from Nancy Roberts.
Yes, it's "Scribble Socks", a Knitting Class Mashup. Using my own scribbles plus my own color choices to design something just for me. It's... perfect!
In my vision, "Scribble Socks" start off with a corrugated ribbing cuff followed by panels of scribbles down the leg, using Lisa Souza's sock weight Blue Skies as the background color and my own hand-dyed sock yarn as the motif color... shading from brick red to leopard yellow through the scribble chart and on towards the heel... which I haven't invented yet.
"But spinnity, isn't an 18 row chart with no symmetry and an unfinished design going to make a very bad travel project? Especially if the chart isn't even finished yet?"
OK, yes, you have a point. Maybe three. But I'm too in love to stop now. At it's best, this color stranded scribble reminds me of the animal heads and sharp turns in the Elsebeth Lavold Viking Patterns for Knitting. The 18 row chart is kicking my ass a bit, but soooo beautiful.
And the fam have been great about participating in my obsession. Brother-in-law JHW listened while I described the whole background story and then named it a "knitting class mashup". He rather likes designing low-resolution creatures for games & Mac desktop icons, so he asked for a piece of knitters graph paper to work on some more design ideas - mirror images and writing turned sideways, encoded meanings. Can I just say? He noticed without being told that the graph paper wasn't square. And if I hadn't given him a piece, he was already asking about the ratio of height & width so he could make his own. Then spouse-man shot the two iPhone photos of the swatch in progress tonight. So at least I can say the project brings our family together. Thank you, family!
Tomorrow, I'll be using my travel time and classroom time during spouse-o's this photography class to tweak the chart and knit more swatch in my practice yarn. I think I need about two more iterations of the repeat to have confidence in the chart. With a project like this, I won't be crying if we get rained out tomorrow afternoon and have to stay indoors knitting. Hmmm... Crested Caracara and Whooping Crane vs Scribble Socks. Hah. I win either way.
You won't see me this week -- I'm in Florida doing some birding and visiting family. Now. As knitters, can you guess what I was doing the night before we left?
If you guessed "1) Going to spinning night at Purlescence, followed by 2) packing, and finally 3) digging through available knitting projects, yarn & books to find *the* perfect knitting to bring with me," you either know me, or we are of the same tribe.
I know knitters who plan ahead for their travels quite carefully (Hi Mom!), but I'm sure I'm not alone in the last minute crazy, right?? Let's hear from a few of my midnight sistren out there! Is there a name for this phenomenon?
Anyway, in a quick post (because the WIFI at this Quality Inn is the suck and we're going birding early tomorrow morning), I invite you to ponder what happens if you take Sally Melville's color stranding / creativity class (taken at Stitches West 2006 - that's my chart above - and this is the resulting swatch...)
and mash it up with the output of a class called "Machine Knitting to Dye For" from Nancy Roberts.
Yes, it's "Scribble Socks", a Knitting Class Mashup. Using my own scribbles plus my own color choices to design something just for me. It's... perfect!
In my vision, "Scribble Socks" start off with a corrugated ribbing cuff followed by panels of scribbles down the leg, using Lisa Souza's sock weight Blue Skies as the background color and my own hand-dyed sock yarn as the motif color... shading from brick red to leopard yellow through the scribble chart and on towards the heel... which I haven't invented yet.
"But spinnity, isn't an 18 row chart with no symmetry and an unfinished design going to make a very bad travel project? Especially if the chart isn't even finished yet?"
OK, yes, you have a point. Maybe three. But I'm too in love to stop now. At it's best, this color stranded scribble reminds me of the animal heads and sharp turns in the Elsebeth Lavold Viking Patterns for Knitting. The 18 row chart is kicking my ass a bit, but soooo beautiful.
And the fam have been great about participating in my obsession. Brother-in-law JHW listened while I described the whole background story and then named it a "knitting class mashup". He rather likes designing low-resolution creatures for games & Mac desktop icons, so he asked for a piece of knitters graph paper to work on some more design ideas - mirror images and writing turned sideways, encoded meanings. Can I just say? He noticed without being told that the graph paper wasn't square. And if I hadn't given him a piece, he was already asking about the ratio of height & width so he could make his own. Then spouse-man shot the two iPhone photos of the swatch in progress tonight. So at least I can say the project brings our family together. Thank you, family!
Tomorrow, I'll be using my travel time and classroom time during spouse-o's this photography class to tweak the chart and knit more swatch in my practice yarn. I think I need about two more iterations of the repeat to have confidence in the chart. With a project like this, I won't be crying if we get rained out tomorrow afternoon and have to stay indoors knitting. Hmmm... Crested Caracara and Whooping Crane vs Scribble Socks. Hah. I win either way.
posted by spinnity at 1/25/2008 08:52:00 PM
3 Comments:
There's a company out there that's starting to sell sock yarn in machine -knitted and hand painted "flats" just like that. I probably wouldn't buy it, but I'd like to do it myself if I had a knitting machine.
Very cool. I'm looking forward to seeing the mashup as it develops.
BTW, you've received an award--visit http://knitflix.blogspot.com/2008/01/you-make-my-day.html for more info. Have a great day!
Ditto!
By the way, I have awarded you the "You Make My Day Award" You can check out my blog for details, and thanks for making my day!
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