Yarn support: that’s the way to do it

Rarely have I encountered a business relationship that’s as kind and respectful as that between knitting designer and yarn company. When you design a sweater, yarn companies typically provide gratis the yarn that you need to knit the sample – which in and of itself is a pretty sweet deal. But on top of that, I have had universally good experiences dealing with yarn companies, from Malabrigo to Cascade to Berroco to KnitPicks. (Stacey, who runs KnitPicks’ Independent Designer Program, is a particular standout.) All have responded quickly and courteously and have even offered great ideas.

Even so, few can compare to Yarns of Italy, a relatively new yarn distributor that develops and purchases yarns in Italy and then sells them in the US for great prices. They have been selling on Etsy for a while, but more recently decided to go more big time. If you have been to TNNA in the last year or so, you have probably seen them.

In fact, to fill out their TNNA booth, the company held a design competition not long ago, asking designers to create something with each of their yarn lines. I was lucky enough to get to do the design for their Volute line, a gorgeous cotton-acrylic blend. (And let me tell you: gorgeous and cotton-acrylic blend are not phrases I typically put together.) The zippered cardigan above, called Velluto, is what I came up with.

All along the way, Kim (one of YOI’s owners, and the creative director) was a delight to work with. She has a whip-smart sense of humor and an easy manner, but is also very professional at all those times where that’s needed.

During the most recent TNNA, Kim even posted a photo of their friend, a handsome Sicilian gentleman, wearing my sweater. In all, I got the overwhelming message that these people love good design and want to do whatever they can to support it.

And then yesterday, I was looking at their just-launched web site, and saw that they had named one of the colorways in their Innamorata line after me! Innamorata is a luscious merino that comes in two weights and a gorgeous palette. Each color is named for a woman that the YOI owners like, and I got to be on the list! In fact, I’m light gray, since that’s the color of the sweater I designed for them. It is such a lovely and generous gesture. (My mother immediately ordered a sweater’s worth, of course. )

You’ll definitely see me designing more with their yarns….

Freebird

I am sitting here at my desk, completely wired on happy. Perhaps you would like to hear why? (Unless you are my secret archnemesis, in which case you probably want to hear no such thing. Secret archnemesis, why do you hate me so?)

See? I’m giddy. Giddy because I have just spent the first two weeks in my new life. My new life that I chose for myself. My new life that it took me six years to convince myself to commit to. My new life that seemed like a crazy pipe dream and now it’s real and it’s going really well.

After six years of graduate school and 13 years as a college professor, I have officially resigned from academia and have begun a full-time career as a knitting designer, teacher, and writer.

Loyal readers of this blog are thinking, weren’t you going to do this about six months ago? Yes, yes, I was, but then a colleague convinced me to job-share with her for a while, and you know what? As kind as it was for my institution to let me have some job security while I figured things out, neither teaching nor scholarship are jobs you can do well when your mind is more than half somewhere else.

So, I resigned a couple of weeks ago. Since I’ve been preparing for — and having near-anxiety attacks about — this moment for years now, imagine my delight to find that IT’S GOING REALLY WELL.

Fear #1: I won’t be able to make even a meager living as a knitter. What am I, 22 years old with this “I’m going to be an artist” crap?

This is a legitimate concern, and I have had my earful of knitwear designers telling me you can’t make a living at design. They’re no doubt right. So I’m not trying to make a living at that — at least, not exclusively.

I’m also teaching, and not just at my LYS, but also looking at nursing homes, play groups, knitting conventions, and fiber festivals. Teaching pays better, and I’ve always loved it.

And I’m doing some interior design work, making one-of-a-kind fiber pieces for an architecture firm.

And most recently two of my favorite people in craft, Shannon Okey and Heather Ordover, asked me to help out their creative ventures on a freelance basis.

And I might apply for a grant. And it’s… just all coming together. All coming together after six years of planning and fretting and planning and back-filling with contingency plans and sweating creative sweat out of sheer panic.

But still.

Fear #2: After nearly two decades in academia, how can I be intellectually challenged enough by knitting?

This is more my friends’ fear than mine, but it’s worth talking through. I’ll be the first to admit that working with one’s hands requires a different kind of mental challenge than teaching about, say, postmodern historiography.

But just because those mental challenges are qualitatively different does not mean that they are quantitatively different. Let me tell you, my head was completely exhausted after trying to figure out how to construct this damned macramé light fixture last week.

This is engineering I’m doing. And algebra. And art. It is stimulating and variable and alive, and I cannot imagine tiring of it.

Fear #3: I will become a crazy person working at home.

Now, this one the jury’s still out on. It’s been only two weeks and already the cat is being subjected to this kind of monologue during the day:

“OK, I came in the kitchen for… what? Oh, that’s right, the dye pot. I have left the motherf&*^in’ heat on under the dye pot again. Criminately, I’m going to burn the house down if I’m not careful…. Ooh, cheese sticks!”

And so on. Yeah, clearly I’m going to need to schedule some OUTINGS. I promise I will wash my hair beforehand.

Been caught stealin’, once when I was 5 **

We here at Dark Matter Knits design studios like to encourage delinquency in our youngest members of society, and so I have created the Better Pocket Scarf, just right for tucking sticky, sticky candy into.

This is all part of my campaign to come up with better knits for boys. The idea is simple: if we start from what they want — instead of what we want them to want — and figure out how to knit that, maybe they’ll actually use what we knit for them.

And what my son wants is POCKETS. Big, deep pockets on every piece of clothing. Pockets into which he can cram all manner of things and then promptly forget about them so that in the washing machine several days later they turn the family laundry into an ink-stained, gum-fused monstrosity. Pockets that can withstand 80 interesting rocks from a hike, an uncapped pen, a half-chewed piece of fruit leather, a gnawing reptile of some sort, and a small explosive device.

If this is the tall order, knitted fabric does not seem to be the ideal metier, but we are knitters, by gum, and we can make ANYTHING WITH YARN. With, in this case, a little bit of plastic thrown in for good measure. So this scarf’s pockets each have hidden inside a plastic CD sleeve so that no matter what gets tucked into those pockets, the yarn blissfully goes on thinking it is being worn by a middle-aged shut-in with manicured nails.

Oh, and also, the scarf has cool shaping (the pockets are knit like hats so that you can knit all the lovely color work in the round) and a fun color scheme courtesy of the affordable Berroco Vintage.

the obligatory Twilight reference

The scarf appears in the just-released Winter 2012 issue of Petite Purls, which is a beautifully produced online magazine of free knitting, crochet, and sewing patterns for children. This issue focuses on accessories, and — I’m warning you — you just might collapse from how sweet they are. I’m especially partial to Alison Stewart-Guinee’s mittens made to look like the Fantastic Mr. Fox. And I want to bottle her kid’s geeky cuteness.

All right, now, get back to work! I’ve got to go get my teeth cleaned, which is so much more fun than anything else I could be doing right now.

** Bonus points to you if you know the song from the title. (It’s one of my favorites — one of the best song bridges ever — though the video creeps me out.)

Hilarious – and affordable – knitting art

Today at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar (one of Austin’s many holiday handcraft markets) I picked up another print by one of my favorite photographers, Lorri Honeycutt. She photographs tiny figurines with regular-sized objects, such as an inch-high sumo wrestler stomping on a grape. Hilarious!

And today I realized she has a photo of tiny figurines making a hat on a regular-sized knitting loom. How could I resist? Should you?

New hat pattern! or, another way to cable without a cable needle

There are some great tutorials out there about how to make knitted cables without using a cable needle. The hat above represents a completely different way of thinking beyond the cable needle: use colorwork to create a faux cable. The next photo shows the effect even more clearly:

See how the sage green sections look like cables crossing over each other? I think it would be lovely on socks, too. If you have Luise Roberts’ wonderful little colorwork stitch dictionary called 1000 Great Knitting Motifs, you will find this stitch pattern on p. 105.

I just made this hat pattern available on Ravelry, and it will soon be up on the KnitPicks web site as well. It’s a quick knit, so if you’re looking for something last-minute for the holidays, this might just be the ticket.

On an unrelated note, I would just like to note that we here in the Land of the Large Eyebrows do not believe in trimming our eyebrow hair. No, we do not.

Yarn store pulp fiction

Here’s a little bit of silliness that I’ve tried to publish in a couple of places, but it hasn’t found a home and I’m just going to share it with you here:

9:45 a.m. The lights come on at the local yarn store. Most knitters know this as a place of refuge, an orderly universe where dreams are made. But I, the gimlet-eyed yarn store clerk, know better. Just underneath the mohair halo lies a sordid underworld of vice, mayhem, and decrepitude. Like Sisyphus – or perhaps Mayor Giuliani – I will toil to clean up this fair city. But the moment I turn my back, the denizens of the yarn store creep back into the streets, ready to spin up trouble….

Of all the yarn joints in all the towns in the world, he walks into mine: the hand-dyed skein with a heart of gold. Oh, he seems innocent enough, with his fresh-scrubbed Nebraska looks and his organic pedigree. But don’t be fooled. Deep in the heart of this skein lies the soul of a ball winder killer. He will tangle up upon himself so hard you will rue the day you were born. One of a kind, indeed – good sir, I have seen your kind before, and I will kindly ask you to take your knottiness elsewhere.

The merino floozies have let their hair spill in endless, unkempt tendrils down the shelves like so many Rapunzel tresses. Seeing no charming princes eager to scale the tower, I tenderly wrap the merino locks back around their heads and tuck in the ends. I cannot help but give them a little pat as I return them to the shelf. They are soft but hapless, and never look quite the same again after once letting their hair down.

Here lies a washed-up novelty skein. She has lost her identification band and even all memory of who she once was. Her sequins have lost their sparkle and her dress is now covered in pills. Her name is Lola. She was a showgirl. But that was 30 years ago when they used to have a show.

From Cascade 220 Towers, some scoundrel has just removed a load-bearing wall of cherry red skeins. The surrounding edifice of burgundies, pinks, and russets threaten to crumble to the ground. Civil engineers are standing buy to rescue the grand old dame.

Over here we find a precious ball of qiviut partying downtown in a sea of acrylic. How have you landed on this side of the city, little qiviut? Does your mother know you’re here? No matter – for you it is already too late. Once you’ve had a taste of the chemical dyes, there is no going back.

Oh, angora balls, with your fluffy haloes and your vibrant colors: yet again you have abandoned all hope and have flung yourselves to the floor. How is it there for you on the dusty pavement? Honestly, it does nothing for your complexion. Next time, might I advise that, before you leap, you grab a springy cotton-elastic blend so that you might bungee right back home again once your adventure is complete?

Down the street, a skein of azure cotton-wool blend cries piteously to herself amidst a sea of cashmere. Poor Cotton-Wool. She had just been engaged to a customer, who vowed to be faithful and true. She should have known better: knitters, they are so fickle. Mere minutes later, the customer entered the adjacent room and spotted the cashmere, just arrived this week. Now here she is, foolhardy Cotton-Wool, not only traded in for a younger, softer mode, but alienated from her kin, dropped unceremoniously in amongst the remaining cashmere.

In this corner we find Mr. Noro, a man of many disguises. The members of his dye lot have been scattered across the shelves, but it’s anyone’s guess where they have gone. From the outside, they all look like strangers. They call out forlornly to each other in this crowded room, but none heed their call.

Now I am reading the Missing Skeins report. A customer has reported you missing, young skein. He desperately hopes to find you again, and the stock list suggests you still live in the city. Your whereabouts are entirely unknown, however, even after a full-press search by the city’s finest.

6:15 p.m. The lights turn off at the local yarn store. For now, the city is safe, but evil lurks in the bins. No sooner has the key turned in the lock than the crime wave begins anew.

Studies in epic genius

It’s one of those Too Many Things on the Plate months. As a consequence, what I’m working on now has been put on the back burner for waaay too long.

So what’s the project? Here’s what I can tell you: A new yarn import company that’s starting up sent me a skein with which to swatch for a men’s garment design. The yarn has a fascinating construction and almost feels like velour. I’ve been rather baffled as to what to do with it. (Being a child of the ’70s, I can immediately envision men’s velour garments, but I don’t think anybody wants to see that hot mess again.)

I’ve been swatching and swatching — even swatched during the Yarn Harlot’s reading at BookPeople this afternoon — and this yarn just won’t yield up any stitch definition. You may twist it, you may cable it, you may throw it into high relief however you like, but it just wants to lie flat. Hmm. I’m not really into designing a men’s garment that’s entirely stockinette right now.

And then there what to make with this yarn. The company clearly wants a garment and I love designing sweaters, but what kind of sweater? It’s a summery yarn, but the phrase men’s summer sweater doesn’t immediately conjure up multiple looks, now, does it?

And then, it hit me. I’ve had several un-pursued designs — sketches I’ve made, ideas I’ve had, but never actually worked up — just staring down at me from my white board. And one of them would be perfect in this yarn. I even sketched it being knit in stockinette and a mistake rib, both of which look good in this yarn.

Sometimes your own brain takes a couple of steps back from you and slaps you right in the face and says “Dumb ass.” And then you put down the knitting needles and the glass of bourbon and you reply, “Thanks, I needed that.”