colourwork

Inkwell pullover

The new amirisu magazine was published last week, with my newest design – Inkwell. This pullover is made up of 4 panels, with colourwork down the centre and stockinette along the sides. When I first started sketching this, I had been sewing a lot with my bodice block, which gave me the idea of incorporating a princess seam in a knitted sweater.

Originally this was only an aesthetic consideration but when I began designing it, the seam also became a construction feature. The shaping required to make the seam line diagonal on the centre panel is also what staggers the vertical stripes after each horizontal one. On the side panels, the seam line becomes a secondary waist shaping point. I think the seam could also be a great place to add, remove or modify shaping – for example to add bust shaping.

I also made a colour picker so you can visualise some colour combinations you might like, try it here!

Diesis for Pom Pom Quarterly

All photos by Nicole Mlakar for Pom Pom Quarterly.

Meet Diesis, my newest design for issue 22 of Pom Pom Quarterly! This autumn issue was guest edited by Juju Vail and aren’t the knits, models, photos and styling just beautiful? I was really drawn to all the pattern mixing and the rich, bold colours that Juju wanted to use and was so delighted to see how it all came together.

For my piece, I started doodling stripes, checks and crosses and came upon this stitch pattern that has a bit of each of these elements. As I was working on the sample, I realised the all-over pattern the stitch created looked like a bunch of double daggers, the typographical symbol ‡, also known as a ‘diesis’. The way the stitch grows at the yoke is my favourite bit of the design but I also love the extra deep cuffs and the way they affect the proportions of the jumper.

I had sketched at least 8 combinations at some point but narrowed it down to these two. In the end we decided on the black and off-white with contrast cuffs and the John Arbon Viola colours were the final, and absolutely perfect, piece to the puzzle.

If you also like to play around with colour, I made an interactive colouring page here with colour pickers for each colour so you see what all sorts of different colour combinations will look like.

Some details on the jumper: it’s knit top-down in the round, with a circular yoke. The stitch is a mosaic/slip stitch pattern, which means only 1 colour per round so the knitting goes fast and the entire garment is nicely stretchy. There are some short rows at the back neck worked into the stitch pattern to make sure it sits a bit higher than the front neck. The body has an a-line shape. I’ve written the pattern in a way that should make it easy to modify the length of the cuffs, if you prefer a more conventional cuff length.

Colour dominance in stranded knitting

If you’re familiar with stranded knitting, you’ve probably heard of the concept of colour dominance. I won’t be writing about how holding the yarns determines dominance because there are so many different knitting styles, and so many smart knitters have already written about it more eloquently than I could, but I do want to have a little look at how colour dominance can affect the look of a stitch pattern.

My Dashes hat uses a very simple and small chart, with the background colour, MC, making up the majority of the stitches – but not overwhelmingly so. Still, enough for me to prefer holding the MC in my most dextrous finger, which puts the CC behind it and therefore in the dominant position for me.

colour-dominance-dashes

To have a good comparison between MC and CC dominance in this specific stitch pattern, I made this little swatch. Because knitting colourwork flat is the worst, and because you’re meant to swatch in the round for items you’ll be knitting in the round anyway, a swatch like this is a great way to check your gauge and have a look at dominance while you’re at it. For this little experiment I cast on 40 stitches, with 20 stitches on each needle using the magic loop method. One needle I knit with the MC (background) dominant, and the other with CC (dashes) dominant. For gauge purposes you should definitely knit a bigger swatch than this though!

I’m having a hard time deciding whether I prefer the MC or the CC dominant in this pattern. Initially I knit the original hat and the pattern samples with the CC dominant, but during a late-night, last-minute-gift marathon I inadvertently knit one up with the MC dominant. By the time I noticed, I had no more time to frog and re-knit so I was a little bummed out, but once finished, washed and blocked, it actually looked fine, although in the low-contrast combination I used, the dashes disappeared into the background more than I’d hoped.

Because the stitch pattern is basically vertical, the stitches get very elongated (did you notice the gauge actually has less rounds than stitches per 10 cm / 4″?), and knitting with the MC background dominant can make the MC-only columns pop out visibly.

A high contrast colour combination will have a different effect than a low contrast one, as will a slippery yarn versus a grabby yarn. I definitely recommend a dominance swatch before starting your colourwork project, and you might as well compare the two while you’re checking your gauge.

A new hat pattern, Dashes

The Dashes hat, my second pattern, was released last week! I’m so happy with this one, it’s fun but not too over the top. It’s a stranded colourwork hat and comes in 7 sizes, from Newborn to Adult L. The colourwork chart is really easy to memorise so it hits that sweet spot between easy but not too boring to knit.

I originally designed Dashes last year as a birthday gift to my friend. Creating new designs for specific people is always great fun and a good challenge as it helps me think outside my little box while still trying to keep my own touch. When it came to Dashes, I wanted to make something graphic but still bright in a way.

As for the Noisy hat, I made a little online colour picker for this hat too. In fact, I actually created the first prototype for this specific hat, and I threw it online really quickly when I got it to work and loaded it on my phone when I was at the yarn shop picking colours for the green brimmed sample. Sometimes colours can look great in the skeins next to each other and still not knit up as you’d hoped, so it can be helpful to be able to preview your colours ideas in the pattern.

knitburo-dashes-hats

colourwork

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