Sometimes all I want to do is stay at home and play around with my new Macbook Pro. :) I’ve been thinking about making a little knitting pattern trailer for a while, and the new iLife proved to be the catalyst. Hopefully one day soon I’ll be able to shoot a proper trailer with an actual camera, and pretty models who bother to brush their hair. A location slightly more stimulating than my bedroom would also be most welcome. In the meantime, the video for Cherry Blossom Girl’s Etam collection is magnifique & very inspiring!
This is my first new computer in 5 years, so please excuse me while I am absent a little, delighting in the sudden brightness of my photos, the fulfilment of my HDM obsession (snow leopard!), and the smugness that comes from knowing that for a month or so at least, I am UP TO DATE!
I worked up some quick swatches yesterday, to decide which yarn to use. The first one is in pink Feza Angora using 4.5mm (US 7) needles.
The second one is in white Alize 3 Mevsim, again with 4.5mm (US 7) needles. Which do you like best? At first I was rather in favour of the pink, but watching the Royal Wedding has swayed me in favour of white, I think.
Normally I have a great distaste for ceremonies & formality; weddings just feel hollow and sordid and… commonplace. But as one commentator remarked, it was nice to “suspend cynicism” for once & enjoy the Royal Wedding as a celebration of beauty and purity. The pomp & pageantry, the wide-angle shots of the Abbey accompanied by the swell of music from the orchestra, and the clockwork organisation were impressive in a way that few things are, anymore. (On the other hand, the Twitter commentary & live internet feed were impressive in a way few things ever were.) I found the prayers moving & nearly missed class just to see the kiss. Surely the sheer number of people who watched all around the world is an indication of just how deeply we long for grace and beauty and spiritual depth, and not only elitism, money and power? I like to think so, at least.
1. Print out this PDF.
2. Cut out the quotation cards (I recommend a ruler & craft knife).
3. String up some ribbon on your wall or corkboard.
4. Peg the cards onto the string.
5. Be inspired!
So here is my slightly Victorian motivation wall with a preponderance of Thoreau and Gibran. This is a project I’ve had in mind for such a long time & it’s almost embarrassingly easy to execute. I just pasted a few quotes into a Pages template et voila!
Sometimes a sentence is all it takes TO DO IT.
& for the small & simple KniTwit Bracelet, which is nevertheless rather a nice opportunity to showcase a bit of pretty ribbon. I have a lot of small lengths of ribbon that I’ve snipped from clothes & tags, and keep in my oddments box. Do you do that too?
Recently, my love of ribbons reached new heights when I discovered Minty, from S/S 2010 issue of Knitty. Except for a few eyelets, you just knit around and around, which means that Minty takes all of a few hours to knit. I have had more comments on my Minty hats than any other hat I’ve knit. My boyfriend even stole asked for my first one (which was black & had icord). The second, pink one, you may have seen on Wednesday’s post, hanging out on my shelves.
The third is grey & I worked the “pepperminty” crown shaping, just for a change. :) I switch out the ribbons to better match my outfit. When I went to Istanbul for the weekend, I even put a couple in my pocket, so simple!
Ribbons are definitely my embellishment of choice. They can be hip or elegant, simple or sophisticated, and at a pinch, you can use them to wrap up parcels. :) Of course, ribbons are nothing without bows. Do you know how to tie the perfect bow? Or maybe you’d just prefer to knit one…
P.S. I hope you will excuse the delay in releasing the Bow Pouch pattern. This week has been such whirlwind of blogging, I thought it would be best to save it for next week.
I’m sure you already have some yarn in your stash for this project. Since you can use either DK or lace-weight yarn, and alter the width to suit your needs, it’s a very versatile pattern.
PARASOL STOLE – £3
I think of this as the pattern for ladies who like Impressionist paintings, strolls through parks, and a bit of peace and quiet while they sip their cup of tea. It puts me in mind, in particular, of this painting by Arthur Hacker, of a lady who’s lost her parasol to the river on a spring walk…
Arthur Hacker - Lost Parasol
The stitch pattern at either end is from Barbara Walker’s Second Treasury, and it’s called ‘Peri’s Parasol’. ‘Peri’, as well as being a neat little prefix employed in words such as peripatetic, periscope, perimeter and periphery, also means “fairy” in Turkish (from the Farsi). Quite appropriate to the light lacy version, I think.
To me the lace looks like a repetition of open and closed parasols. Or perhaps open parasols spaced with flower buds.
The ribbing and border lace are definitely reminiscent of the rills and eddies of a gentle stream.
And when it’s worn with the edge folded like a shawl collar, the bell-shaped decreases make the ribbing look like flowers. See…
I can’t help it, I love knitting pieces that have names or references that interest me, even if it’s entirely invisible to anyone else who looks at them. I suppose it comes from being a literature major. :)
There are so so many paintings of ladies with parasols! I think painters must have particularly enjoyed painting them because they can provide a plain splash of colour to set off a pretty face from a busy background. The following two ladies are lovely in their green serenity. The second lady even has her eyes closed, enjoying the spring smells and sounds of her garden.
Frederick Frieseke - Lady with Parasol
Richard Emil Miller - The Pool
Green does seem to have been a parasol colour of choice; even Monet chose it for his lady on the windy moors.
Claude Monet - Woman with a Parasol
I love the expression on this pink lady’s face too. Look at her rosy cheeks!
Robert Lewis Reid - Lady with a Parasol
When I have time to knit another one, and if I can get my hands on some multi-hued art yarn, I’d love to knit a purple or sunny yellow one. Just look at the delicious purples of this lady’s gown!
Richard Emil Miller - Woman with Parasol
Frederick Frieseke - The Garden Parasol
And I do think a lace-weight version in grey would look very elegant when I want to dress smarter. Ahh… so much to knit, so few hands! Do please help me out. :)
‣ Gauge isn’t critical, but It’s
important that the fabric
isn’t too tight, so that the
lace looks open and clear
when blocked.
‣ DK-weight stole:
‣ 12sts / 20 rows
‣ over 10cm / 4in
‣ in blocked ribbing.
‣ 1 lace repeat is 17cm x
9.5cm / 6.7in x 3.7in at
widest points after
blocking.
‣ Lace-weight stole:
‣ 20sts / 23 rows
‣ over 10cm / 4in
‣ in blocked ribbing.
‣ 1 lace repeat is 13cm x
6.5cm / 5.1in x 2.6in at
widest points after blocking.
‣ Finished size will depend
on blocking. The lace-weight
sample was approx: 39cm x
145cm / 15in x 57in.
‣ 4.5mm (US 7) straight needles for both versions,
‣ or size suitable to yarn.
‣ Finished size will depend
on blocking.
‣ The DK
sample was approx:
51cm x 155cm / 20in x
61in.
‣The lace-weight
sample was approx: 39cm x
145cm / 15in x 57in.
Hope you’re all having a delightful weekend!
Note: Some of the paintings in this post were discovered on It’s About Time.
For some time now, I’ve been looking for a way to easily throw together a bunch of images and create a “moodboard” that I can print out. Sure, I can open up an image editor, but my Macbook isn’t as nippy as it used to be (understatement). I finally found a cross-platform program called ShapeCollage that does just that, and I thought I’d share. It even has an online version. Here, for example is my moodboard for “writing”:
I find my images on we♥it. Unfortunately, most of them don’t have proper sources, but as this is only for my personal use, hopefully no one will mind.
Pink is powerful. It can make anything cosy in an instant, without being aggressive or overwhelming like red. Pinks don’t clash, which is lucky for me, because at the moment, everything I make or buy has to be pink! I worked up this pink version of my hot water bottle cover pattern the other day. It only took me a day and a bit, so I’m considering making one for each of my girl friends, for Valentine’s Day. I wonder whether I should modify the hottie pattern into a muff so that I can wear it out and about? I had a muff when I was little that had strings to go around your neck. And I’m always losing gloves! What do you think? :)
Also, I loved this video by Michelle Phan about different ways to wear a scarf. I usually do a loop or a wrap-wrap, but I’m really excited to try out the knots she shows.
Every knitter knows this is the best possible advice in all circumstances. Even if you’re procrastinating by knitting, hey, at least you’ll have a jumper by the end of it! If you’re a strung out, tangled-up, deadline-bound knitwear designer, every time you look at this poster I hope it will remind you to take a deep breath and remember why you love knitting. See number 1? It’s calming. If you’re snowed under with Christmas knitting/shopping/carding, if you’re annoyed at someone, or if you’ve just been dumped (ahem), keep calm and cast on. Stiff upper lip, darlings.
Click on any of the thumbnails to download a PDF file of the poster. Then print away!
The crown design is from a slipover I started knitting years ago, by the way. I suspect it just needed to be seamed together, but it’s still sitting in a basket in Ankara. Funny how that happens…
Ah, December. Post-autumn, pre-Christmas, prime Knitting Season. It comes after the shooting season, before the London season, and is by far the cosiest and the most fun. I’m exceedingly pleased with my WoollyWormhead Mystery Hat, now christened ‘Everglade’. The gales in Wales almost claimed it, but I ran after it into the wet black night and deftly snatched it back. I’ve lost too many hats on walks, dear knitters. First my pink & black Pirates hat, which I dropped on the beach at Ynyslas, then a navy blue Felicity which I lost on a woodland walk. The latter was particularly annoying, as it went so well with jeans. I refuse to relinquish any more knitted hats to the wilderness!
Anyway, I just got my very first printer, which I am very excited about. Up until now I’ve had to talk nicely to other people to be able to test the KnitLove collection, or scan various application forms. Now I get all the hassle & expense myself. Yay! The first thing I printed was the ‘Get Excited and Make Things’ poster. Actually, I usually reverse that order…
Knitting this won’t take you much longer than emptying the contents of your mug… unless you drink really quickly. Or knit really slowly. And for the moment the pattern only costs 90p. Go on, knit a few. :) What I loved about designing this was that I was able to just sit down with my mug of tea, and ‘unvent’ as I went along.* See what I mean?
I just followed the cables on my mug. I might still be struggling bending notes on the harmonica, but bending a cable is a piece o’ cake. I found this knitty mug at Superdrug a few weeks ago, by the way. It isn’t the most amazingly crafted piece of crockery, but it’s got cables & it’s pink & I love it.
More quick gift-knits will be coming soon. We all know it’s not “last-minute” until we’re in double figures at least. ;)
I hope you’ve all seen the wonderful wintry delight that is the latest issue of the Twist Collective, dear readers. Apart from the usual joy I feel at seeing the latest patterns, this issue had an extra little something that sent my heart racing in excitement. As the page loaded I jumped up and walked around the room for a while… Then I took a little peep. Eee! I ran off again and did something else because I just couldn’t bear the excitement. Then I came back again and looked at the next page. Squee! Here’s the spread with my photos illustrating Paula Berman’s beautiful poem, ‘Clotho Visits the Local Yarn Store’. There are a couple of photos on the Articles page too, but I thought I’d share some of the outtakes with you, and tell you how it all came to be. You can see the full set on Flickr.
The whole vision took a while to present itself to me, as it always does. After I received the poem, I did some brainstorming on paper, I set up a few shots with my spindle and some roving, but things were grey and still and boring. As is always the case, I had nothing in my stash that would work for the assignment. I was also having trouble with good natural lighting, so I decided to take a trip to Wales. True to the title of the poem, I visited my Local Yarn Store first. I walked in, carrying my weekend bag & backpack, rather out of breath as I was hurrying to catch the train, and asked the girl at the counter whether they had some nice creamy-coloured yarn, something fluffy. She thought about this for a bit, then went and found me a ball of Wendy Chic. I explained that I meant yarn with a nice pile, preferably something natural. She ummed a bit more and found me another ball of acrylic. I gave up, spotted a bag of a silk/merino blend that was on offer, paid and ran out of the shop. I’m sure Clotho never had this trouble…
Clotho, in case you don’t know (I’m sure you do) is one of the three Fates (Moirae) from Greek mythology. Clotho (the “spinner”) spun out the life of a person, Lachesis measured it out, and Atropos cut it. The Fates were usually depicted wearing white, and I thought making everything very pale would add to the sense of mystery and dislocation. This meant getting very cold in a white summer dress in the cottage, and seeking out blank walls. I did my best with the spinning shots, as my skills are still rather rudimentary. I dreamt a lot about ordering a custom ebony spindle, but I overran the deadline as it was! Ah well.
The next photo involved emptying all my boyfriend’s books off his shelf. I wanted a lot of ghostly motion in the photos; everything must be ethereal, as the premise of the poem is basically a dream (and I imagined Clotho as rather incorporeal).
I love the end of the poem, the strong voice booming, ‘I am Destiny’. This is mythology, after all, not the place for happy endings. I wanted to presage this; Clotho’s inability to escape her role. Here is Atropos sneaking into the shot, ready to cut the dream short…
I hope you enjoy the photos, and thanks once again to the lovely ladies at Twist for giving me this opportunity! :)
hot water bottle cover with pocket - £3.00 (approx. $4.70)
houses slipover - £3.00 (approx. $4.70)
earring & key holder - free
bow pouch - free
* Paypal will show you the precise currency conversion before you confirm the sale.
(round)about
My name is Derya and I'm 25-years-old. This blog is an experiment in better living through knitting. Learn more about Laylock in the Introduction. If you'd like to get in touch, leave a comment or email me at: d.y.davenport AT gmail.com.
3 June, 2011 | 
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