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slow design
I’ve had this idea in mind for several years now, loosely based on a Theory garment I purchased at Holt Renfrew on a Boxing Day sale a few years back. The construction of the garment is a bit unusual, and requires a lot of soft drape. Because of the cable detailing, it also needs a thin enough yarn to allow the cables to feel delicate rather than bulky.
This design has been in the back of my mind constantly, and I evaluate every yarn I see that might work for it. Until a few weeks ago, though, I hadn’t come up with any suitable options.
Lorna’s Laces sends out periodic emails to their shop owners and designers from time to time, and I read, with interest, about their newest yarn:
“Yarn X” is a 70% baby alpaca and 30% silk blend. It’s a DK four ply. I like it knit up on US size 5′s and I’m getting 22 sts/4 inches. This yarn is uber soft. Squishy too. Cuddly even.
Hmm. Sounds just about perfect.
(Incidentally, you can vote for the name of this new yarn! I’m rooting for Dreamcatcher.)
On Thursday, I came home to a small box with plenty of skeins in a gorgeous new semi-solid color… the PERFECT color for my design. (What? You want to see the color? Sorry – you’ll have to wait until after TNNA. It’s a secret, so I stripped out the colors and played with the white balance of these photos.)
I instantly wound up a ball by hand and grabbed some needles to start swatching.
As it turns out, my initial impressions were bang-on. This is indeed the perfect yarn for this project. It’s smooth enough to show the cables, and simultaneously light and drapey enough to provide the perfect hang to the fabric. It’s also a joy to knit, without the splitty-ness that sometimes happens with 4ply silk/alpaca blends.
I absolutely love it, and feel insanely lucky to be one of the first knitters to work with this amazing yarn.
Much in contrast to designing Watershed, this design is an exercise in advance planning. It’s an unusual construction for me, and with the cables, I want to make sure everything works out. It’s also a deadline project; I want Lorna’s to be able to have the sample garment in their booth for TNNA in June. I want them to sell the heck out of this gorgeous yarn, and I want to help.
With many of my designs, I take a more free design process. I always start with a swatch in stockinette to make sure I like the gauge, and I use that as a starting point to figure out what to cast on. But I often design on the fly, and a lot of times it doesn’t work out so well. Me and the frog are great pals.
On this one, I need to do it right out of the starting gates. I’ve spent two nights so far, swatching in stockinette and cable panels, to see what will make it to the final design. I’ve measured, and sketched, and taken notes, and I think I’m ready to cast on later today.
My design swatches aren’t big. When I work from another pattern, I always make sure to do at least 4 inch squares of stockinette to check gauge. But when I design, I’m not trying to match someone’s gauge; I’m trying to determine the fabric that works best for the idea. Maybe it’s cheating, but shorter swatches work fine for that, as I check the gauge both as I knit and after the finished piece is blocked.
Do you block your swatches? Well?
Most knitters I’ve met skip that step, and I have to admit, I used to be one of those. It all changed for me while I was working on my first crochet book. I wet-blocked a few of the sample squares for the stitch pattern section, and boy was I shocked when the crochet puffed up and opened out, and looked perfectly professional. Even though I knew that washing a garment would change the final size, I sort of never believe it could impact my work that much. Now, it’s a habit for me to quickly wet block my gauge and sample swatches every single time.
In the case of this yarn, the blocking not only helped the cables lay open and flat, but gave the fabric even more lofty drape. Now I can be confident I’ve got the right gauge for the design, and I’m basing it off of the right cable section measurements.
So I’m excited to get really started on this piece. It’s not going to be speedy knitting; I’m working at a stockinette gauge of about 5.5 per inch after blocking, and cables always slow me down. But it’s going to be luxurious and challenging and just what I feel like doing right now.
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May 8th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Cables! Cables! I can’t knit cables!! But it looks promising and yarn looks super soft.
May 9th, 2010 at 7:16 am
I can’t wait to see the final product…I always love your designs. And thanks for your designers process, it helps me to understand construction even more.
May 10th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
I LOVE the fuzz. It looks like just enough to be soft and warm without getting in your nose! I can’t wait till it is named and released!!