The weather turned on a dime here from winter to spring and with it the “blue ridge haze” appeared for two weeks without a break. So, ever optimistic, camera mom and I went for a nice 2 ½ hour drive along the parkway looking for the quintessential mountain range background.
Love Letters Cowl Design Story
Like Shadowlands Headband, our next Slip and Rise release, nods to CS Lewis and Puddles.
Shadows of Inspiration
Such joy and smiles occurred when one of you wrote and asked if “Shadowlands” was inspired by C.S. Lewis. You know us too well!
Hemming and Ending Slingshot
Puddles and I are so excited to introduce something we’ve not done before – a pattern designed to learn and practice Lindsay’s Invisible Short Rows for 2 color brioche knitting! We could have just created a dishcloth, but that wouldn’t be very “Knit Eco Chic” so instead we created a fun faux-bius with directions for an optional skinny scarf.
Upper Back
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.
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 …
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!