bricoleur knits

Contest is now closed, thanks for entering! Congrats to Heather Nielsen! Please email bricoleurknits@gmail.com to claim your prizes. 

Have you heard? I’m a West Coast girl now! Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m still rooting for the Red Sox and missing Rhode Island clam cakes something fierce, but I’m starting to love my new home here in Seattle. The stunning views, the gorgeous produce (yes, I said produce) and the vast scale of it are slowly creeping into my heart, which is why I’m SO excited that the vibrant East Coast knitting scene is making its way out West! 

Vogue Knitting Live, the incredible event put on by the lovely people at Vogue Knitting, is coming to Los Angeles, California and they’ve invited me to teach! I had such a blast at the inaugural NYC event (read more here) that I jumped at the chance, and I think you should too! You can leave a comment here to enter to win admission to one class at VK Live L.A. this September. Tell me what California style means to you, or what kind of knitting you’d do if you were suddenly an L.A. resident full-time. 

The winner I randomly choose on 7/15, 11:59 P.M. will also receive a Cali style gift bag from me: a copy of my favorite fashion read at that moment, a specially selected L.A. inspired nail varnish and a sneak peek at what I’m working on for my book! 

If you’d like to sign up for my classes, you can click here. I’ll be offering these 4:

• Knit Different: This course aims to introduce knitters to the myriad ways there are to make a knit and a purl stitch. We will survey the many methods of knitting from around the globe and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. At the very least, throwers will try picking and pickers will try throwing, and two-handed colorwork will be introduced. 

• Design with Confidence: Designing knitwear involves technical knowledge, knitting skill and artistic vision, but beyond that it requires confidence. This course will help you articulate your goals as a designer. Lecture and discussion will take place in the first half and the second half will be devoted to construction of a mood board, croquis and specs, and if time allows, swatching and preliminary planning.

• Finishing Tricks: Find out how professional knitters finish sweaters! From blocking to buttons, I’ll share all of the tricks I”ve picked up working in the industry.

• Internet Workshop: The Internet has revolutionized the craft of knitting, transforming it from a hobby into a lifestyle. This workshop will introduce you to the many resources available online, from blogging to buying and selling stash. Consider this workshop a safe space to ask all those questions you’ve been afraid to ask!

Visit all the stops on this blog tour to learn more about other course offerings: 

7/4 Carol Sulcoski @ Go Knit Your Hat

7/5 Shannon Okey @  Knitgrrl

7/6 Beth Casey @ Lorna’s Laces

7/7 Amy Singer @ Knittyblog

7/8 Amy Swenson @ Indigirl

Can’t wait to see you in California! 

XO CR

When I first met creative wonder Larissa Brown, she told me that she was working on a book called My Grandmother’s Knitting. I instantly fell for her gumption. Her book is going to offer a gorgeous counterpart to the countless, careless, LAZY instances of journalists saying “This is not your grandmother’s knitting…” This book says, “Hell YES this is my grandmother’s knitting, and it is awesome.” 

I am so glad I was able to convince Larissa to include my Concetta Swing Cardigan, a project inspired by an heirloom that I’ve loved my entire life. 

Most families pass down folksy, traditional items made with love, things like Christmas stockings, christening shawls and Fair Isle mittens. My treasure is decidedly decadent, a total indulgence for the knitter, my great-grandmother Concetta. This sweater, which has a matching skirt, was knit with a singular intention—to dazzle.

Creating the fabric was no doubt labor intensive—every other stitch on every right side row is decorated with a clear, iridescent sequin. The yarn was well chosen, a smooth, plied yarn that appears to be a wool-nylon blend, perhaps a yarn intended for baby garments. Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine makes a wonderful substitute and stands up to the abrasion of pre-stringing all those sequins. 

The inside reveals several loose ends, not woven in after 60 years. I had to laugh—it appears that my at times laissez-faire approach to finishing is in fact genetic! I like to imagine that my great-grandmother simply couldn’t wait to wear this masterpiece.

While the trim, three-quarter length-sleeved top is perfectly modern, my first impulse was to simplify. Knitting with sequins has fallen out of fashion, and perhaps with good reason—there is no getting around that it is a somewhat tedious practice (a tip for threading: measure the length of 10 stacked sequins, then use this measurement to estimate how many you’ve threaded).

To minimize the monotony, I converted the cardigan to a simple circular yoke construction with abbreviated, slightly puffy cap-sleeves, and a decrescendo of sequins. These simplifications keep the knitting pleasant and the overall effect more Vargas than Vegas. I hope you love it as much as I love the original. I wore the original to my senior prom with a vintage jersey disco dress and I felt, quite literally, like a star. 

XO CR

Dear readers, I am BEACH BOUND. And I couldn’t be happier about it. I originally wanted to photograph what I packed so I could share it with you, but I am lucky I got out of the door at all! I tend to pack for trips the way a costumer might style a movie wardrobe. I pick a character or era and pack for that. My schizoid closet can make packing a chore, so I love this organizing principle. I originally planned to pack items that Audrey Hepburn might have worn on the French Riviera in the 1970s, but I hit up a sale at Levi’s and suddenly my summer wardrobe was more Appalachian watering hole than Cote D’Azur (see proof here).

This threw my packing schema into upheaval, but my suits and my polish choices are still heavily 70s (mostly American Apparel one pieces and a range of peach, burgundy, persimmon and one olive green).

I just finished reading Furious Love and am suddenly preoccupied with Elizabeth Taylor. I am a total neophyte, and am looking forward to tackling her filmography over the next few months. One of the things I loved most about the book was all the images and stories of Richard and Liz on various beaches and boats. While it is clear that Miss Taylor was not slathering on any SPF, I find her confidence totally inspiring. She was teased by directors and Richard Burton about her prodigious curves but it never seemed to get her down. Let’s all take that to heart, and to the shore.

(Yes, I bought a commemorative magazine at the airport. What?!)

XO CR

The Interweave Knits Weekend 2011 preview just went live, and I’m so happy to be in this issue. It is my first time in IK, actually, and it’s really just a simple little thing, but I’m still pretty proud! 

I contributed an extra-long cowl that I am calling the Mixt Cowl. I used Berroco Boboli, and I had so much fun watching the colors change, it seemed like each stitch was a new color, some shiny, some matte, all of them fascinating. I chose a simple biasing lace stitch and watched the prismatic eyelets chase each other around and around. It took next to no time to knit because I could barely put it down. 

The IK team placed it in a summer story and left it long and loose, which is exactly how I like to wear cowls in the warmer months, but I had a lot of fun playing around with this cowl before I mailed it off. It can easily be worn doubled or once around your neck and once over your head, like a Hollywood starlet in a vintage Roadster! If only…

There is a built in twist that will make this cowl look elegant with minimal fussing. Pick a color (or several, each colorway of Boboli seems to contain at least a dozen) and cast on! 

XO CR 

I can finally share the last bit of work I did for Berroco! Today is what is known at Berroco Inc. as Switchover Day, which means that all of the new pattern booklets and yarns have been posted and are ready to be ogled! Take a look here (this theme makes links pretty covert, but just hover your mouse above the word ‘here’ and you’ll see it). The design team is at TNNA, and while I won’t be joining them this year, I am still very excited to share this work with you. You’ll still hear my voice in the audio slideshows, and I hope you’ll see my influence in the styling of these booklets. 

Towards the end of my tenure at Berroco I did less and less designing and a lot more styling. I really loved creating mood boards and themes for each of our shoots, and compiling the perfect accessories and props. 

It was particularly fun to style Booklet #315 Bohemian Mix. We knew we wanted a complete jumble of color and texture so Norah and I had a blast digging through our respective closets. What came out on the other end was a lush mix of Norah’s incredible jewelry layered on top of two or three of my printed dresses, topped with Norah’s vintage scarves. Add some peculiar pets and some dried foliage and you have the perfect mess (and I mean that in the best way).

We knew we had great potential to fail here but I think we made something pretty cool. I love that our extremely disparate styles came together to create such a singular look. The booklet throws together a lot of yarns with very strong personalities, and the overall effect is fun rather than chaotic. 

Ha! That kind of sums up the job itself. I will truly miss the insanity of photo shoots. The weeks of frenzied preparation and worrying, the long days of shopping and even longer nights of knitting. Seeing the final result of all that work always transcends the stress. I hope you’ll agree it was worth it. 

XO CR

My brand new dress form, Stéphanie*, named after a character from Michel Gondry’s gorgeous La Science des revês, or The Science of Sleep. My little atelier is complete and now the work begins in earnest…

“I love her because she makes things. You know? She makes things with her hands. It’s as if her synapses was married directly to her fingers [wiggles fingers]. Like this. In this way.” 

XO CR

* I was almost named Stephanie, after my father, Steven! I struggled to grow into my strange name, but now I can’t imagine having another. 

Greetings! In my last post I alluded to news (scroll down to read my tips on sketching, or read on to hear my announcement). It isn’t exactly a secret at this point, but I would love to officially announce that I am working on a book!! I am pretty much the last of my cohort to do so, but I’m so glad to be doing it now with Melanie Falick at Stewart, Tabori & Chang. I’ve been a longtime fan of Melanie’s impeccable work, and I’m so honored to call her my editor for this project.

I’ve been trying to come up with my short synopsis of the project and it has proven a bit difficult, I have to say! It will be a pattern collection in line with the Vintage collections I did at Berroco (in DK, Worsted, Chunky), with a special emphasis on styling.

While I was at Berroco I learned so much about creating a story, traveling all the way from a yarn to a finished image. Before Berroco, I helped countless people shop for projects while working at Webs. In between all of this yarn, I was in a graduate program where I studied the use of aesthetics and fashion in the construction and performance of identity.

The book will hopefully contain elements of all of this, and practically speaking, my focus will be on garments that are knit logically, with an eye towards functionality. In my recent move I callously jettisoned a LOT of unworn sweaters. It was liberating and TOTALLY telling! My goal will be to create wardrobe staples with tons of visual interest, a la my most famous FO to date, Mlle Aidez.

So, that brings us to the sketch. The humble, terrifying sketch. I never went to fashion school, and many of my contemporaries didn’t either. It’s really scary to put your ideas down on paper, and it’s hugely disappointing when they look nothing like the sartorial visions in your head. While I was at Berroco, Norah showed me that there is no shame at all in tracing over a flat figure to get your proportions right.

I haven’t made the same high-tech leap to the iPad that she has, but I still believe in the value of good tools. I find sketching much easier with a quality pencil, and the sight of my little glass pencil sharpener keeps me cheery no matter how wonky my cables look. I picked up my supplies at Utrecht Art Supply in Providence (and inherited a few lucky pencils from Margery Winter). You can buy my favorites, the General’s Layout Pencil and the Alvin Ink Well sharpener on their website.

That’s it for me today, I have to get back to sketching because did I mention? The most important think you need for solid sketches is PRACTICE…and confidence. It’s amazing how much I like my sketches when I stop berating myself. Try it!

XOCR

Well, HELLO. I’m sitting here wondering if blogging is like riding a bicycle, but muscle memory is taking its sweet time to kick in, so I’ll just start typing…

It has been quite awhile since I’ve blogged on my own, and truth be told, I sort of fell in love with micro-blogging via Twitter in the past couple of years. My duties at Berroco kept me so busy that I came to view blogging as a somewhat onerous task. Could you blame me, though? Everything else was so much more entertaining!! Meeting with mills to pick out new yarns, puzzling out color schemes with Norah, shopping for inspiration on the web (often at another new e-obsession, Pinterest), even swatching was more fun than wrestling with HTML, at least for this mild technophobe. 

So what exactly am I up to these days? Well, I’ve switched coasts for one! Last month I drove from Providence, RI to Seattle, WA. I’m still making sense of what that all means but the trek was most enjoyable. Here are just a few “postcards” from my journey: 

The plains of Minnesota looked like some of my favorite things, the Wizard of Oz, the Grapes of Wrath, Carnivale…I loved the spare, open landscapes and scraggly lonesome trees. 

A cold and snowy day at the Badlands. Saw some delightfully scruffy mule deer, and heard incredible birdsongs that seemed to carry for improbable distances. We were practically alone in this incredible landscape. 

Except of course for the jackalopes ;) 

I seem to have a pattern addiction. This seemingly simple ensemble contains stripes x 3 with a side of gingham and whatever weird moiré tessellation is happening on that pink Brooklyn Industries bag! 

Besides reserving hotel rooms for next to nothing using the Priceline app, the best road advice I can give you is to stock up at local co-ops. We stopped at many, including the amazing Bozeman, MT Co-op. Start your day with fresh water, fantastic coffee, freshly squeezed juices and fill your insulated tote (we bought one at the Wedge, another fantastic co-op in Minneapolis). Stopping for these carefully procured lunches became a delightful picnic rather than a depressing pit-stop. 

Montana charmed me in many ways, Butterfly Herbs in Missoula being just one of them, recommended by none other than Knitting Iris—I’m still bummed that I couldn’t swing by and say hello. Look at the perfect mint blue-green in this candy jar: 

Do I even need to tell you how excited I was for THIS pit-stop? 

Road snacks and a book I held hostage from the library as a young girl. I finally bought myself a copy at Wall Drug in South Dakota.

This glorious spectacle in Spokane more than made up for the very wimpy sign that welcomed me to Washington state. 

I think I’ve said my piece for today, but stay tuned for some exciting news. I will be blogging more regularly here as I embark on a new project, but if you’re looking for more frequent non-sequiturs, feel free to follow me (bricoleurknits) on Twitter. 

XOCR