We've just got back from holiday in Australia, seeing various friends there and in Hong Kong on the way (and making some new ones:
)
Whilst there, not one but four of my favourite recent patterns got published, three in Knit Now and one for Artesano yarns. So there's quite a lot to cover, and this will be a bit of a spidery blog post telling you about them, because it's not obvious how I string them all together...
Two of the Knit Now patterns are part of a special Arts & Crafts supplement and I don't mind telling you I was quite desperate to get a pattern accepted for this issue. My Pre-Raphaelite passion may not be quite as intense as it was when I was a teenager but it still burns, and I'd had in mind for some time a pattern passed on the shawl used in Arthur Hughes' painting April Love.
This one was really just a straight steal from the picture, the challenge being to replicate the very floaty loveliness of the shawl in knitting yarn. Rowan came to the rescue, with Baby Silk Merino and Kidsilk Haze, and the result is my simple April Stole.
Second Arts and Craft design was a bit more complex. Started with this painting by John William Waterhouse:
Then took a pinch of catwalk....
That's from Anna Sui's Spring 2014 Ready to Wear. I had my colours - blue and gold - and my look - flowing and lush - but what garment would it add up to? Here's where I went back again to my teenage years and not to my Dante Gabriel Rossetti posters but... the school panto. My friend Sara played Dandini, Prince Charming's valet, in the Ysgol David Hughes production of Cinderella and I had an image of her, dressed in Principal Boy style, dancing to Don't Stop Me Now by Queen as her character prepared for the ball. That memory gave me the final bit of inspiration for a dashing take on the Pre-Raphaelite look, a long-line gilet in Louisa Harding Grace Harmonies with the gold provided by a ribbon detail, and named Dandini after Sara's character.
So, the obvious jump from the Arts and Crafts movement would be... the World Cup. Erm... I had an idea for a hat that was basically half a football, sized for kids and adults, using the classic construction of joined hexagons and pentagons. It sounded simple but actually, it's quite a hard thing to knit accurately. You can't really use stranded colourwork, unless you're far more of a genius knitter than I am, because the strands across the back between sections are so long; I didn't want to use straight intarsia either, because I wanted the effect of diagonal lines at the edge of each piece. (And I am not ashamed to admit I suffer from wonky-edge-stitch-instaria syndrome). It also didn't help when defining edges pieces of the same colour. I went to one of my favourite technqiues, the single stitch cable or cross stitch, which could be used either to join a new colour or to create an edge without joining a colour. The pattern looks quite complicated, partly because it's almost impossible to sensibly chart, but I really have done all the hard work for you, because once you start knitting it's quite obvious where the joins should come.
Now, I always say I don't design for children (not having any of my own to hand) but Football Crazy is really all about taking me back to my own football-loving childhood, so perhaps there is something in common between my 3 patterns for issue 34, and that's things that obsessed me at school!
As a coda to all of this, I've got to show you my new design for Artesano, Buscot, not because it's got anything to do with my childhood, but because I simply love it...
It's part of a new collection to support Artesano's new Linen Silk DK yarn and rarely have I knitted with a yarn that is such a pleasure to turn into stocking stitch and cables. Even opening the parcel full of shining, rich, skeins of yarn was a sensory experience. Artesano have chosen to make the pattern free, so I'm hoping lots of people will get as much joy from knitting it as I did!
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