fusion knitting...

the process or result of joining two or more patterns together to form a single entity.
The San Diego photo-taker did send me one photo that I can show you of my denim lace hoodie (see previous posting) - notice, I only gave you the back view and my own photo of a flat shot. I did promise to tell you what I did to come up with this.
Starting off with the idea to make myself a spring jacket, I had visions of a denim jacket hoodie - I had this nice big cone of cotton denim boucle that my friend gave me last year - I had used that yarn in several garments and am very sad that it is no longer available - if you have some, be nice to it! Anyway, my favourite garments (blogpost - Update, June 27, 2012) in that yarn were a long lace skirt and my prototype for 'Two Way' (Serial Stuff 4), another lace effort. The yarn is cotton boucle with a nylon binder that makes it shrink up and become quite stretchy as well as thick, so knitting it quite loosely (T9) in lace thins it out so that it doesn't become too bulky.

I used the border lace pattern from  'Lace It Up', KW#37, used the A-line shape, hood  and the full needle rib hems from 'Lacey in Red',  KW#40. For the front bands, because of the shrinkage factor, I knew that the FNR horizontal bands wouldn't work  I did try a swatch of stockinette bands - a ripply disaster! Then I remembered making a vertical FNR band where I knit it from the top down so that the first buttonhole could be made at the beginning of the band, then make a bunch evenly spaced, knit more plain band than you know you'll need and take it off on waste ('Forever in Blue', KW#28). Assemble the garment except for the front bands - toss it, bands and all in the washer and dryer to shrink it all and then put the front bands on. That's the whole story!

Oh, today I found a new reason to be obsessive about hanging yarn marks every 10 cm at the edges of my knitting - I use them primarily for seaming - makes it go much more precisely when you can match up the marks. Well, I was happily knitting away on the front of another 'manfriend hoodie' and at RC140, thinking, wow, this is totally easy, zone-out knitting with nothing to do until the underarm and it suddenly dawned on me, I blew right by attaching the top of the pocket at RC090...arrrggghhh! No worries, I pulled it all off the needles, unravelled it down to RC082, 2 rows above RC080 for the exact row to rehang and reset the row counter exactly, no guessing and trying to count up from the bottom...

cover story...

The San Diego seminar was fun! I showed them a blast from the past and my latest and newest.
I had a brand new denim lace hoodie to show, that I hadn't even mentioned to anyone or blogged about - I explained to the group that it was sometimes difficult to get a decent picture because I live alone and even if someone capable of taking a picture comes by, I may not always be having a good hair day but after seeing the photos posted on the guild website, I probably won't be so picky. The assigned-photo-taker asked me ahead of time if it was okay to take photos that she would post on their website and I said alright, so long as you don't put up a whole lot of me gesturing wildy, with my mouth open and eyes closed - man, I never knew I was so un-photogenic! But there's the proof - fortunately, I'm over it or I wouldn't be telling you how bad they are, but, you'll notice, I didn't give you the link - you'll just have to google it or take my word. If you do find them, there is a nice one of me and my friend Kay, aka Grace who came all the way from NY to see me - we are both modelling our RTR Lace Cardis - hers in a  beautiful deep pink colour and she even made a plain matching shell to wear with it - nice work, Kay!

When I was packing my seminar suitcase, I picked up an old sweater, one that I particularly loved (still do)and actually still wear on a summer night, out on my deck - and thought, what the hay? I'll take this - one of the topics I was supposed to be teaching was 'summer knits' and I figured this would fit right in. Now, the rest of the story - way back in 1994, my first design ever to grace the cover of an international machine knitting magazine - It was the last issue of 'The Carriage Trade' - new owners had just purchased the magazine from the founding editor, Ruth Johnson (who was retiring with good grace) and introduced a new and improved layout with a full colour cover with a real, live model for the first time! Next issue, they renamed it 'Canada's Fashion Machine'. Anyway, I was thrilled to have my design chosen as the cover garment. It was called 'Cotton Tuck Lace Rib Pullover' and that mouthful about said it all - it was a double bed, tuck lace (needles out of work that aided in the larger holes) a rib stitch (every  8th stitch on rib bed)  and a 4-row tuck stitch on main bed, with two empty needles either side of the tucked stitch - I always liked the fabric because it was light and airy and I meant use it again somewhere - now might be a good time - watch for it!
Manfriend Hoodie and Girlfriend Hoodie pattern almost ready...