Fiber Fool

Last week I went on about how being aware of my surroundings inspires me. I know I am not alone in that. I also know that is a very common answer from creative individuals when asked about their inspiration. This doesn’t mean life is all sunshine and roses and everywhere I look I have a new idea pop into my head.

There are definitely periods when I do not find myself inspired by what is going on around me. In general I’m not a big fan of the “push through” philosophy. I feel lulls in creativity are a natural part of living a creatively centered life. Sometimes you just need to absorb and take in and bank some energy for the next push. But, there are times when deadlines are looming or I suddenly realize I’ve been in a low-point for an extended period of time. It is at this point that I do give myself a nudge.

Often it all it takes is to thumb through one of my many stitch dictionaries. They are full of a rainbow of post-it notes marking stitch patterns I’ve been drawn to before, some with the rough notes of the start of a pattern even. Sometimes I’ll pick one of those time-tested stitch patterns that have caught my eye before and sometimes I pick something that I hadn’t noticed before. But I’ll grab swatching yarn and needles and begin to do just that.

Those of you who skip swatching are probably rolling your eyes. Swatching is an important part of designing and is a process that needs to at least be respected if not enjoyed. I find most of the time I enjoy the process of swatching. It gives me an opportunity to get to know the stitch pattern and its behavior - does it readily knit in the round? do I like the direction of the decreases? would a centered double decrease look better or is the line too harsh? Often once I’m up to the third vertical repeat I’ll have ideas on how to morph the current stitch pattern into another stitch pattern.

My Nave Socks pattern (pictured at top) came out of swatching. I took the original Lotus Blossom stitch pattern from one of the Barbara Walker Treasuries and slowly simplified it with each repeat until it was a simple column of yo’s and a centered double decrease. Other times during the swatching process I’ll notice a small portion of a stitch pattern and isolate it like I did for Mendocino socks in Successful Lace Knitting by Donna Druchunas. Or I’ll realize some small portion of a stitch pattern is using a particular combo of stitches that might help me form my own stitch pattern. An example of this is the flower in the cuff of Dog Days of Summer which helped me figure out the perfect paw print pattern for Guided by Love and Pyewacket.

So, sometimes if your surroundings are not inspiring you just need to play a bit. This goes for all media, not just knitting. I often had to give myself permission to just play with paints or other materials with no specific goal in mind when I was doing my mixed media work as well. Play is an often underrated tool in the creative arsenal.

Here is a peek of what I’ve been playing with this week. I’m busy working on writing the MSK July newsletter and getting some other patterns ready to go out to test/sample knitters so there hasn’t been a lot of knitting time this week. Though to be honest, I’ve knit this little piece of fair isle a couple times.

Your eyes are not deceiving you. This is stranded colorwork knit flat. I know that is practically unheard of. We all know I like nothing more than a big challenge though, right? In truth, it isn’t terribly difficult. I wouldn’t want to knit an entire sweater this way. Steeking is definitely the way to go. But, thanks to knitting backwards, working colorwork flat is not too difficult. I’m glad that I had learned to knit backwards and knitting entrelac though. It probably would be a tad more tedious if I was also learning how to knit backwards. I taught myself by turning the work and getting the needles and yarn into position than turn it back to have RS facing. I’m glad I did that because I almost always have to refresh myself on how to do it when I do use it. It isn’t something I use regularly.

Knitting backwards is a great skill, as I mentioned, for entrelac, or anything that is somewhat narrow and annoying to keep turning your work. One could even do it for heel flaps! Also, if you hate purling you might find backwards knitting (knitting from left to right) more enjoyable. If you’re curious about knitting backwards there was an article in Knitty back in 2006 and there are a few YouTube videos as well - for throwers like me (with voice instructions) & for continental knitters (with no voice instructions). In actuality, for stranded colorwork I use both techniques because I prefer to carry a yarn in each hand when knitting fair isle.

I thought maybe this weekend would be for lots of knitting, but it has filled quickly. Though, oddly with no plans for the actual holiday. So, perhaps Sunday will be full of lots of knitting. I can hope anyway :-) The heat wave is supposed to break then so that would be great actually.

I’m working on a mini-theme for my ECFs for the upcoming weeks. I’m hoping I can maybe keep the idea going through the entire summer. If it looks like it is going to pull together I’ll share it with you and hopefully have the first in the series next Friday. I’m kind of excited about it and the list of “possibilities” keeps growing and growing.

To all my fellow Americans - Happy Independence Day! Please be safe and enjoy yourselves!

Julie posed some very interesting questions in reply to my peek at secret knitting I used for Eye Candy Friday last week. In general, she is curious about my creative process. So, I believe today will be first in a roughly weekly series about my creative process. She started me off with a few questions, but I am certain receptive to answering addition ones. If you have any questions about my creative or design process please feel free to ask them in the comments below.

Oddly, I’m setting myself up to answer one of the more complex topics of the creative process, inspiration. For me, inspiration comes from a wide variety of sources. In general I suppose I can sum it up as just being hyper aware of my surroundings; especially noticing patterns and textures in the world around me. This is a trait I’m pretty certain I’ve always had. It was this natural attention to detail and observation that had me going into a scientific field in my first career.

This trait of analyzing my surroundings is one that has only grown as I’ve aged. As a mixed media artist I liked to be inspired by colors around me and now as a photographer I find myself always analyzing composition and relationships of neighboring items, which includes noting patterns. The more you observe your surroundings the more it becomes second nature and the more critical you become.

Some of my designs have been inspired by nature and terrain, like Spearfish, Coyote Ridge and Flatiron. Others were inspired by a pattern I saw like Netherfield and Longborn (even though the color choice that was made for the book really didn’t fit the name/inspiration) which were designed after noting the wallpaper pattern in the dinning room of Longbourn in the 1996 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. The Moxie hat and mitten set were inspired by an art deco rug I saw somewhere.

My surroundings aren’t my only source of inspiration. Different things can move me at different times. But, I’ll save those for another post another week.

What about you, have you been inspired by your surrounds?

This is what I spent a chunk of last week working with. The yarn is a combo of Madelintosh tosh sock left over from Cirrus and some Louet Gems Fingering I had in my stash. I’m sooooo excited about this project it is just killing me having to keep it mum. I’m hoping sharing this little peek will help ease the pressure a tad.

Because I was figuring out yardage per square inch over several types of stitch patterns I was needing to weigh my knitting at pretty frequent intervals so I could estimate total yardage for the official project. I found weighing the knitting and the balls of yarn it in a bowl the same size as the scale’s platform gave me more consistent readings. I was also spending a good chunk of time out under the patio umbrella listening to audiobooks while I knit and discovered the bowl was a good way to keep track of my yarn and keep it from snagging on weathered wood or picking up bits of pollen that had fallen on the patio and what not.

I guess it is a good thing that I’m the only one who tends to use the metal bowls in our kitchen because I think it might be a while before this one finds it way back. Though I suspect great grandma Davis wouldn’t mind her bowl being put to use in this manner.

My stockpile of facecloths has been slowly dwindling over the last few years as they’ve worn out and I haven’t replenished my stock in at least 5 years. Looking at my sad stack of 5 cloths remaining I decided it was time to remedy it. At first I was going to hit my local Bed Bath and Beyond or Target, but then decided small projects and non-wool yarns are prefect for the needles in the summer when the house temperature often soars to 80+ degrees by late afternoon so I decided to make some fun and special facecloths to make my beauty rituals more fun and a special treat rather than something to hurry through to get to work or bed.

With July 4th coming up my mind had turned to stars. Not 6 or 8 pointed stars, but the good old 5 point star. Well over a year ago when I was messing around with mitered knitting I had thought about making stars with the technique. When I set out to make a 5 pointed version however I had no idea what I was getting myself into! The first attempt I had misplaced the increases and decreases and was getting a pentagon rather than a star. A rookie mistake, but I hadn’t worked with mitering in a while and hadn’t bothered to reference anything on the first try.

Having jogged my memory of how you want to place the increases and decreases in relationship to each other to create the mitering I blithely continued onto trial two, but decided to use a few patterns as reference material and they ended up steering me wrong. I suppose that is what I get. I ended up with something very starfish-like as the center bulged and the points curled quite a bit. The kicker was that I thought the placements of the increases and decreases was odd, but it was clear I was getting actual points so once again I did not listen to the voice in my head and knit a whole cloth before realizing round 2 was not the answer. The result was kind of cool, but really not what I was going for.

The third attempt was closer. I got straight and properly proportioned points on the star, but #3 would have made a much better pastie for someone even more graciously endowed than myself, LOL! The center would not lay flat and since I was working with an inelastic blend of cotton and bamboo blocking it flat was not an option. Not to mention who wants to have to severely block their washcloths? That just doesn’t seem practical.

To remedy the bulging center problem I decided I needed to both start with more stitches and increase at a faster rate. It worked for the fourth one. I got a nice facecloth that would lie flat, but my points on the start were kind of skinny and took away from the inner circumference of the cloth. Since I can’t imagine the points being used for much more than removing eye make-up I didn’t want to sacrifice the size of the non-point section of the star so it was to the drawing board AGAIN!

The fifth time was the charm in this case. I ended up combining trials 3 and 4 into what has become the official Stellar Facecloth pattern. What I had been envisioning to be a couple days design project ended up taking me the entire month of May! Not quite exclusively, but it got the bulk of my design attention for the month. While some have thought me nuts to keep trying I’m glad I did. I really like the outcome. It is a nice and generous size cloth (12.5″ from point to point), it has a very pleasing star shape, and it only requires laying flat to finish drying (you can partially dry it in the dryer) rather than a true pinned blocking.

These three were knit from Frog Tree’s Picoboo, a fair trade pima cotton and bamboo blend yarn. I’ve never used a blend for washcloths before so we’ll see what I end up thinking about them once they come home from My Sister Knits. Or, maybe I’ll be able to squeeze a striped one from the leftovers that I can keep at home and try. Supposedly bamboo fiber is anti-bacterial which would be valuable in a facecloth so I decided to give it a try. Plus, the slight sheen makes the washcloths seem that much more “special.” The yarn is classified as a sport weight by Frog Tree, but I think it is probably on the line between sport and DK. I opted for US5 needles because mitering tends to make fabric a bit more stiff. Normally for facecloths my tendency is to go down 1-2 needles sizes from the recommendation because when cotton is wet it stretches so easily. But US5s were perfect in this application.

The pattern is free for the month of June only in the My Sister Knits June 2010 newsletter which is available on their Community News page! I put it up last Friday and I can’t believe the amount of hits it has gotten in such a short period of time. I’m so excited and want to thank those of you who helped get the word out. The amazing response tells me it was worth the five tries to get the shape just right!