After a few false starts… The sweater is underway! The back to the ‘join in rnd’ part is complete, which gave me an opportunity to test the full length of the chart once through.
Lindsay’s Invisible Short Rows
One of the things I love most about brioche knitting is the reversible nature of the stitch. When it came to short rows, though, the techniques I could find all “displayed” the short rows in varying degrees of glaring announcements “there is a short row here!” I knew they had to be a way to make it completely invisible.
brsssk stitch demo
The brioche slip, slip, slip & knit the 3 brioche slipped stitches together (brsssk) is demonstrated in today’s stitch tutorial.
Two Color Brioche Knitting Working Both Colors At The Same Time
How do you work your brioche knitting? I was a one color at a time gal, but then I wondered, could it be done simultaneously? The answer is yes!
Foundations
As the workers create the foundations of our home, I get to the foundations of the sweater to wear there! The foundation for my designs is excel. I start with a template I created in Jill Wolcot’s “A System of Grading” course and go from there.
Proportional Design
To the bat cave, batman! The next step is to take the data mined from swatching and plug it into excel and illustrator. One of the design elements that is very important to the brand of “Knit Eco Chic” is proportional design elements. So, I sketch out the Medium first (since that’s my base size) and then the small and large. I use a 10% scale and then do a locked ratio size increase to blow it up (or rather, I just zoom in, but that’s not so easy for you all to do reading this). For this design it’s the back center panel that is the main design element. Analyzing the sketch – 2 things pop out. I’ll have …
To Cross or Not To Cross
Fitting in with “Hems and Ends” – when working two color brioche in the round, do you cross your yarns at the color transition or do you not cross your yarns? As I was knitting Aspen Travels, this question kept egging in the back of my mind.
Mixing Techniques
What do you do when you can’t decide whether you like the right side or the wrong side of your cowl better? Transform the pattern from a right side/ wrong side design to a fully reversible one!
Interview and Review
A quick blog this week for International Dog Day and news on “Take the Plunge.”
Meanwhile in Maine…
A site photo from the ground clearing company was sent to me this week and I was so excited to see where my future first nest is going! It made me reflect upon the joy of the process and not just the end result so I decided to try something a little different with my next design. Puddles and I invite you to join along in the process of designing a sweater worthy of Maine’s forecasted winters!