Sunday, September 22, 2013

So I went by the Green Bean the other day to get some shots of the show up on the walls. I have to say, the photos don't do any of it justice but I so badly wanted to share them that these will have to do! Half of the pieces were finished within hours of hanging so I guess it won't be till the end of October when I get a chance to properly document those pieces. Did I mention the show will be up through October now? That's pretty exciting since the High Point Furniture Market happens in October, so now all the interior design big-wigs can buy it all up!!

 This post I'm going to highlight the 3 "Aloof" pieces. This was my first go-round with Intarsia, a color knitting technique where the colors are connecting at points of change, but are all worked separately. This means every time you need a new color within a row, it needs its own ball of working yarn, follow me? So, starting at the top, things were easy, I had two colors, 3 balls of yarn and I got to start getting the feel for it. But then, as I advanced, more and more balls of yarn were needed. 6 then 12, then 15.

This is 15 working yarns here. In truth, it's not difficult to knit with 15 yarns, the difficulty lies in keeping the balls organized. There's a few methods I approached to dealing with this problem. First I tried the don't-worry-about-it method for a few rows and then would stop and reorganize. Next I tried sitting on the floor and attempted to keep the balls from moving while I fastidiously kept them in order every stitch. 
Not fun. 

 Then I went for everyone's favorite, the fuck-it method. Here I happily enjoyed my knitting while caring less about the balls behind my work. This works great until the tangle seizes up completely and won't allow you to advance any further. At this point, I was up to 23 working yarns active on the needles. WOAH. I decided to persevere with this method, cutting when necessary to free my yarn and just get the damn thing over with!

 Here I am after the storm clouds of wool yarn have rolled back and I find myself on the homestretch. When a new yarn is started, the tail is brought to the front, to keep it from getting mixed up and mixed in with everything else. Those have to be dealt with after finishing.

 Ahhh, peace and tranquility! How clean it looks! Success! But with one mistake, so of course that means I have to do another one. I also wanted to play with multiple color schemes, and liked them all so much that I couldn't decide which to do. Aaand some jerk told me to do all of them and of course I listened.

This is #2 or "Aloof (orange)" as its labeled. Color isn't very accurate in this image but did my best with the lighting available. I got organized on round 2. I had the wizened days of weeks past to keep me from jumping in so recklessly on this one. And instead of finding myself bored with repeating a design, I found myself knowledgable and was able to work more smoothly with less brain-wrapping attention given to my work. That was nice.

 Here we go, I found every possible can or jar around the house to test this theory of organization. Luckily for me, I have a plethora of large industrial thread spools from a local hosiery mill and Adam's old Bali Shag habits worked in my favor. This didn't work quite as well as I hoped, mainly when the balls of yarn got so small that they didn't have enough weight to stay in their proper compartment, but it  still was much better than any of my earlier attempts. 

By the time I got to #3, "Aloof (pink)", pictured top, I came to the conclusion that simply having small balls of working yarn that could be pulled through the tangled mess when needed proved easiest. This means from time to time you have to knot and add more when you run out, but it's a small price to pay. That, with the jars, was sufficient.

Now I'm looking at a new knitting project that is pushing me into the 30 balls of yarn range. Am I crazy???

Stay tuned...


1 comment:

  1. so ambitious! i would definitely start to sweat at about 6 balls of yarn. looks great! real profesh mounting takes it home.

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