Showing posts with label Vaasa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vaasa. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Vaasa is up!


Today the Spring issue of Black Purl magazine came out, and the pattern for Vaasa is in there, free for anyone with the courage to try it! There's a pretty melange cardigan by "LaVonne" Angela Best(seeing my name beside hers was worth the whole dpn ordeal!), and one of Wanda Blount's (funkycrochetdiva on ravelry) very funky hats. (Carol Ventura has a blog post about this fantastically creative tapestry crocheter, don't miss it.) There's also a good article on Korsnäs sweaters, and another one on the ethnography of Haitian ceremonial flags. This is a really interesting magazine, both scholarly and fashionable, and I have a great deal of respect for L'Tanya Durante, the editor. It's a privilege to be a part of it.

I really do feel for the poor brave souls who take on Vaasa. So I promise 2 tutorials here, one for knitters and one for crocheters. For knitters we will discuss how to do Crochet Jacquard with 3 strands: this is a lesson in Zen self-mastery, as Sriyana who works with 8 strands (!!) recently pointed out. For crocheters we will discuss Double Pointed Needles, Knitting Thereupon. It will be called "dpns and their puta madre".

This is what my blue Veritas, Equitas looks like to date before weaving in. And I still don't quite know how to explain the thumb gusset decreases in a written pattern.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Vaasa


These are FO at last! No more knitting for awhile, thank you very much! This weekend I hope to send in the pattern.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Vaasa, a.k.a Korsnäs Consolation Prize


Remember The Sweater? It's still hibernating. I need my Mum. She could do anything. Given a sewing machine, she could have Saved the World if necessary. Not me, I can't sew and I don't have a machine and I don't trust myself to steek that sweater without her.
But then I got this great gig. Black Purl magazine was looking for a pattern using both crochet and knit, and she contacted Carol Ventura who contacted me - thanks to my frustrated efforts of last summer with the Korsnäs Sweater! So this is what I'm making for L'Tanya of Black Purl Magazine, and in passing I'm satisfying my thwarted need for Korsnäs. They're like little mini Korsnäs sweaters that you wear on your hands!
Everybody will hate this pattern: the crocheters will hate it because of the stranded knitting on dpn's (heaven help us) and the knitters will hate it because of the very difficult 3-stranded crochet jacquard. Well, I can't help it if the Korsnäs girls are geniuses, can I?

Wasn't I supposed to be Not Crocheting Until July? Well...yeah...but as Cole Porter once said, "the best inspiration is a call from my agent."
As soon as these are FO I'll ask Mr. Croft very nicely to take some pictures of them!