Week One: Show and Tell... it with Stripes!!

I started the week off thinking, stripes, how hard could it be right? Ha. Here are two examples of some of my more inventive responses to my brief.

a). Tuck Stitch Stripe:

b). I don't know what to call this. It was one of those "happy" accidents that you try to recreate over and over again, but can never remember how you messed up in the first place. It's along the lines of a Tuck Stitch Stripe, but the stitches were dropped and the sample washed to felt the knit and keep the stitches from unraveling. Secrets of the trade, secrets of the trade.

I have so many samples from week one and two that my binder refuses to close, I have to leave it open. I made a mad dash to a stationary store after the course today (everything closes here at 6, the course ends at 5/5:30 and it takes 30 min to walk into the center of town) to get a extra large binder that will probably only hold the samples from week one alone. Ahhhh!!! Knitters accumulate so much stuff!!!

Week One: Hit the Ground Running, As They Say

Hmm... Can someone confirm or correct the capitalization of As and They in my title up there? I was too lazy to try an unearth the rule on an online MLA.

So week one:

I have definitely hit the ground running. After a whirlwind weekend that involved packing up my entire flat, getting it ready for the subletters, moving me, my yarn, and my three knitting machines down to London, where my incredible friend Magnus (check him out for all your graphic design needs) hosted me and my aforementioned belongings to save me from forking out for a hotel room in Brighton while I found a new place to live for the next 12 weeks, I knit. I knitted from 10 to 5:30. I knitted Monday to Friday. I knitted stripes. Zigzag stripes. Ombre stripes. Broken stripes. Striped chevrons. Undulating stripes. Tuck stitch stripes. Tucked stitches stripes. (yes there is a difference). Weaving stripes. Shaped stripes. Felted and unfelted stripes. Dropped stitch stripes. on and on and on. When I wasn't knitting, I was memorizing knit handouts trying to translate what I read on the page in front of me and also figure out just how the heck I'd managed to complete an undergrad and masters degee in fashion and textile design and still obviously have SO MUCH MORE to learn. When I wasn't memorizing knit hand outs, I was thinking about my label. My knitwear label. Even when I wasn't directly thinking about knitting, my most basic thoughts involved yarn. How was I going to order it? Where were they going to ship it?

I commuted to Brighton everyday from London, while the entire country's transportation system was incapacitated by relentless falling and never melting snow. 5:45am wake up call, followed by a 6:00, it's amazing Magnus is still speaking to me (just). Home by 8/9. Even though I had early starts, I wondered how it was possible that I could be so tired. I got home each night feeling like I'd spent a day performing hard manual labor. Well actually, maybe I have. Some people have suggest that knitting causes a chemical reaction in the brain. Perhaps creating all these new neural pathways really is hard work. See you soon for a review of week 2 and photos.