project : herringbone scarf

I totally started this December 5th with the intention of giving it as a gift for Christmas ... and only finished it yesterday. Knitted laterally, this project definitely took a great deal of time. But it was so worth it!

The pattern can be found here.

Yarn: madelinetosh tosh merino light
Colorway: Betty Draper's Blue (I actually blended the light and dark version of this colorway, hence the different subtleties in hue)
Yardage: roughly 700 yards

designer : the knit kid

Knitwear is in a strange place. If you browse knitwear patterns online, you feel like you've been transported back to the 1970s or 1990s and can never escape. But then if you find yourself on Sandra Backlund's site viewing her portfolio, you think knitwear has a chance - but it's still too experimental for everyday wear.

When my friend Elyse texted me this morning asking if I had heard of this Etsy designer, I was beyond excited to see modern, fashion forward and wearable knits that are as beautiful as they are minimal and clean - not overly fussy, covered in too many techniques - just speaking for themselves.

Just simple enough not to scream "my grandma made this for me" - the clean lines, color blocking, and fresh hues erase any sentiment of that.

Gorgeous!

Source: http://www.etsy.com/shop/theknitkid#

knitwear : final project

At the moment this is just me wearing it, but I plan to do a real photo shoot this summer with my favorite model Elyse! These beautiful photos are courtesy of Mallory and her amazing photography skills!

The tank, using the threadlace technique, is made of nude thread and periwinkle blue baby mohair/silk. The sweater is a merino wool/silk yarn.

knitwear : patterns

Ever wonder what a machine knitting pattern looks like? Here are the two I designed and used for my knitwear final.

 

Intarsia pattern for the honeycomb graphic

 

Tuck pattern for the honeycomb texture

These are knitting machine punch cards. The machine (though not truly a "machine" as it does not run on electricity, it is all manual) reads the holes on the cards to determine where the needles will be placed on the bed. While we have learned how it works, it still seems like magic to me. 

CFDA class project

For those of you still wondering if I exist ... I do!  The thing that has been robbing me of my free time lately has been our new design class, in which we design a well-considered collection complete with swatches, full illustrations, and an essay and submit it to the CFDA for a scholarship at the end of the quarter.  As you can see, a lot of work must go in to this project!

Here are some shots of the process work, and a couple explanations along the way:

 

My mess as it is currently consuming my bed, and my working color palette, inspired by the colors on a scan of a brain during a migraine.

Preliminary sketching

Wool jersey and alpaca yarn; inspirational palette of lilac-beige-grays

My knitting pattern charted out and in progress; a swatch of a variegated yarn that happened to match my palette

More color inspiration; watercolor print design based off of the brain scan

Sweater to be done in a kid lace, shown at right

My concept evolved around the migraine - tension, twisting, tightness, a wrapped up feeling.  Since knitwear is my passion, the collection will be of knits - I also found this fitting due to the way each loop is interlocked and interacting and when stretched, tension forms between each stitch - entrelac and cables will be featured in the designs as well, to further propel this idea of twisting, intertwining, knots and tension. 

Stay tuned for illustrations!

scarf sneak peek

Still in the experimenting-with-different-stitches stage (and figuring out if they'll even work together - got some kinks already) but here are a few sneak peek shots of preliminary swatching and the yarn for the scarf I am designing.  The actual color is not to be revealed until it is finished!  Shown here is a skein I got for testing purposes (gorgeous color though).

The yarn is Madeline Tosh Merino Light, and the color pictured here is "Dusk".  It is a fingering weight yarn, 4 ply, 16 wpi.  It is unplied, which is my favorite - the yarn has a smoother texture that I love.

I got this yarn from a store called Purl SOHO, in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan.  It was an incredible store - bustling and busy, and I'd never seen a busy yarn store before.  There was a wonderful selection of not only yarns and supplies, but books as well, and some I'd never even seen before (including some of the ones I saw in the Japanese bookstore at Mitsuwa - mental note has been made).  In addition to the skein for swatching and of course the final one for Andrew, I got myself a skein, in the color "Calligraphy", a beautiful blue-toned dove gray with hints of peachy pink.  This I will use for the "counterpart" to Andrew's scarf.

In other news, my green sweater is finished!  At least the knitting part.  Got a blocking mat in the mail on its way to me so I can actually sew it together (as well as my silver lace tee) and get those ready to wear.  Can't wait!

knitting a sweater, and gorgeous knits of the season

Hey, what's that Rachel?  Oh, just a sweater I'm knitting in my un-air conditioned apartment in August!

A little sneak peak.  Almost 75% done, but it knits up really fast.  Is that a neckline?  An armhole?  You will find out!

But really, knits have been on my radar.  And after a lot of thinking, and a huge revelation that knitting really truly makes me happy, I've decided that for next summer I will take an "entrepreneurial quarter" (in which you develop your own line in place of a co-op).  I'll take the time to swatch my little heart out, design a few pieces, and knit them (in the summer).  I am beyond excited for this.

So, since I always get excited too far in advance (is a year enough?) I've decided I'm going to try my ways at my first knit design.  Because I've never designed a hand-knit piece before, I'm going to do a scarf so I won't have to worry about shaping (necks, arms, etcetera).  Yet the masochist in me is all oh let's combine millions of complicated patterns in cool stripes but one color so you have this textural difference so before I know it, it's not going to be easy at all.  But hey, that's part of the fun - knitting is a puzzle, and that's why I love it.

I have this week off work, so I will take some time to visit various knitting shops and find some yarn for swatching samples.  After years of avoiding swatching, I've finally realized it is somewhat important.  (Funny how it happens that way.  Same as pre-shrinking fabric.)  But because of all this knitting going on, I've become obsessed with how they're being used in high fashion.  Knitwear gets a bad rap for being dowdy or mumsy, or very conservative.  And yes, those patterns exist.  But then you could say that all shorts are inappropriate for work, which isn't true.  It's just about finding the right ones (length is a big factor, no doubt). 

It's fun to browse high-end designer sites to see where knits are.  And as knitwear grows in popularity with the DIY trend, it's easy to see why more and more people are becoming interested in knitting their own things.  Some gorgeous knits at Net-a-Porter:

 Stella McCartney and Rick Owens (look at the similar textures - popcorn stitch)

Rag & Bone and J Crew

Paul & Joe Sister and Stella McCartney

If you can knit, you can make these things.

**Disclaimer** It will not happen overnight.  Knitting unfortunately takes time and patience.  However, it does not come with a $935 price tag!

weekend updates

Hello everyone!  I hope you are having a nice weekend.  Sam is in LA for the weekend (to finish up fittings with Elle McPherson for a new reality fashion show) so I've had some time to work on my own little projects.

 I did some painting!  Those are sheer sleeves, of course.

I have also had time to finally tackle my knitting - decreasing in a lace pattern is difficult because every row will begin at a new point in the lace chart (this will make the most sense to any readers that knit).  So quite literally I will have to write out every row from here on out, and now that I've attempted a few rows and gotten them right I will be on my way knitting again!

 Sneak peaks mostly - you can see the hand-written rows (such a pain but fun, like a puzzle) and the elasticized ribbon I bought for it. 

 

And last weekend I made it up to Mood Fabrics to get some swatch ideas for my tailoring design of the moment (no buying fabric yet, since my ideas go bipolar sometimes).  I'm still playing with the brain scan idea, so the exterior of the coat will be in a blue-gray wool (like a steely slate color) with a vibrant orange-red lining.  I have always loved silk faille for its texture, so I want to use that as the lining fabric.  However, finding this in vibrant colors is proving difficult - I may need to dye it myself (which I would be more than happy to do!)

 Quick sketch I made for reference.  The top swatch is a camel hair wool, $30,00 a yard; the darker swatch is a wool cashmere blend that is $25,00 a yard.  In a perfect world, I do not want a textured wool - something more felted and flat, and brushed.  These are more color references.  I expect there to be more options as fall approaches.

Now for more knitting!  Have a good lazy Sunday everyone.