Process is the Product

With the completion of the new hat designs, I'm pretty much done with shop production. I might knit up some re-stock on a few pieces, but I might not. We'll see. After this season, no work will be available for sale, so if you wanted to buy, now is the time.

I've never liked using the term "one of a kind," but there are pieces that I've produced and sold that will never be made again. Others were of a limited run of two to five. That's the way recycled yarn lots work. I've recycled a lot of sweaters, and only once have I found the same sweater a second time. Once. Aside from the limited nature of recycled yarn, there's also the work itself to consider. A lot of hats I've sold were simply a pain in the ass to produce, and because of that will never be made again. Then the recycled yarn of the original piece will get used up, and the opportunity to duplicate will be gone. I guess the whole point of this long-winded paragraph is that good work is already "one of a kind," and that if the work is truly original, then using "one of a kind" as a selling point comes off to me as… I don't know… redundant?

My work has always been about design. Divide, Shear and Reflect (at their most basic) are shapes: the cross, the parallelogram and the diamond, respectively. Throughout each series, I have demonstrated that knitting technique diversifies the compositions of a single shape in some pretty cool ways. Each sequential variation within each series has utilized the space of it's designated shape uniquely, and I've organized them with NATO phonetic naming structures. It's all "Process." I produce tangible demonstrations of visual thinking. My work has never been about knitting. What I'm selling is my creative process.

Or at least I will be until I close my shop on December sixth. When will it be open again? I have no idea. Why am I closing? Because I want to do something else. I want to learn something new. I want to offer something other than hand knits. So in order to do that, I need to creatively explore. I need to go get lost in the wilderness or something. I need to evolve. And let's face it: the shop is just one aspect of my web presence. I'll still have this blog, my Facebook and Twitter, and all the rest. I'll never stop doing creative things, they just won't be for sale (for a while).

Shear Foxtrot Zero

I don't do this enough. I don't usually have the time. This was one of those projects where I had an idea in my head, and I just ran with it. I wasn't bogged down by preliminary preparation, or mathematical assurances because I already know the math works. I learned that from Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta and Echo. The math works. I sketched a little, but that's it.

In a way, this was like a test. Based on all the previous work, can I just pick up the materials and tools and just improvise something? Apparently, yeah. I can. There are some new variations to the technique like mid-row transition origins, and transition-dependent stitch changes, and transition breaks. I don't expect you to understand any of that, they're just things I threw in there because they popped into my head.



Fiber preparation ended up being very time consuming. You may recall that tumblr post from way back where I split the native double strand that the sweater had been knit up with. Well, that's what took forever. It was ridiculous, really. But in order to achieve the appropriate gauge, I needed a three strand, and that meant I had to split at least some of this yarn lot. It was infuriatingly time consuming, and I cursed a lot.

So with the Fiber Prep, and the level of craftsmanship of the work, this particular piece proved to be more work than what I typically produce for the shop. And all that work makes it more valuable to me than I could ever convince a buyer to see.

NOT FOR SALE

Divide Bravo Eight

This is the other color of that vintage Caron from the eighties I scored a while back. Compared to the khaki yarn, this one was of much better quality. Big Box yarn companies are notorious for knots and slubs, and apparently it's been happening (at least) since the eighties when this yarn was produced. From the four skeins in the khaki color, there were seven hanks (the twist donuts) produced. That's three knots that had to be cut. In contrast, the brown had no knots at all. Color was also consistent, as a whole. There were no faded areas, or inconsistencies.





So this is Divide Bravo Eight. I really need to go over my notes and see how many Divide Bravos I've made because it's way more than eight. That's just the number of modifications/clarifications to the design. I think it could also be the best seller in my shop, but I barely pay attention to such things. I've made a lot of these, let's just leave it at that.

The design has four different pattern stitches dispersed into intersecting dual speed simultaneous transitions. Does that make any sense to you? No? Good.

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