In The Hood

Prototyping usually means spending production time on things that I will never wear, or even want to wear, for that matter. I don't usually share these types of projects. There really isn't an end product. It's merely an opportunity to develop an understanding of various techniques. I don't even know what to call this. Is it a hood? Is it a helmet or a balaclava?

So the goal here was to examine the construction of a hood. In this particular instance, I've used a saddle shoulder technique. It seems appropriate enough for maintaining structure along the top, but in the process I noticed a discrepancy between the saddling strip and the side stitches.

The merging of vertical and horizontal stitches seems to personify the length and width difference inherent in the stockinette stitch. This is to say that a stockinette stitch is short and wide, and when you graft sections perpendicularly such as with a saddling technique, the side stitches flare out along the saddling. I wonder if a preparatory row of sequential decreases would even things out? The benefit of this type of hood is already quite visible. I like how rounded and bulbous it looks.

The brim edge is a series of picked-up stitches and held stitches re-joined in the round. As you can see, there are some decreases in there to combat the flaring, and tighten the opening slightly. This seems to work well in this particular situation, but I think something more variable is in order. Maybe a drawstring tunnel? I guess that's something to consider for the next prototype hood.

Nudge Bravo

It's liberating to finish something as big as Nudge Bravo. Never mind that it took me a year to produce. Never mind that it got back-burnered and pushed aside over and over again.

Technically I finished this in November, and guess what? When it was done, I washed it and put it away. Holiday Season was in full swing, I needed to focus on making hats for the shop. I was too busy to book camera time for my personal projects. It got some coverage over the past year on my Facebook Page, but that's about it.



Come to think of it, I never shared much of Nudge Alpha either. It was a piece I did for a private buyer. It was exhausting, and I under-charged for it. I never offered scarves again after that, and declined all custom orders. People don't seem to realize what they're asking me for when they request custom orders, at least not until I state my astronomical pricing. Yes, Nudge Alpha was definitely a learning experience.



But anyway, Nudge Bravo. It's done. Nudge is about structural randomness. It consists of a sequence of randomly selected numbers from one to seven worked in a ribbing alternation. As the sequence is nudged to the right, a new number is chosen and worked into the left side of the work. I chose to leave the edges borderless, anticipating an interesting edge. The subtle curling seems to flow consistently with the overall improvisational nature of the work.

The yarn is a quadruple thread multi-strand consisting of 70% cotton and 30% nylon, recycled from a Gap men's cardigan. The added weight of the nylon contributes quite well to the drape of the fabric. I think the nylon also adds a shimmer to the yarn that is difficult for me to demonstrate in my photographs. Do you see it?

Regardless of the influences that de-prioritized this project in the past year, I'm glad this one's done. I wear it all the time.

That's a Wrap

This year's Christmas wrap ended up being a no-brainer. This J Crew catalogue was fished out of my sister's recycling bin a few years ago, and filed away in one of my "re-use" stacks. I'm not sure what the paper size is, maybe an A3? I'm not sure. Anyway, with the help of a glue stick, I managed to double the area for the larger gift, and the smaller ones fit just fine with a single spread each. The ribbons (if you can call them that) are some of the leftover pages from that Gap Annual Report I used last year.

Happy Holidays!

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