Je t’aime, Aimée!

 

I am totally in love with this little capelet, Aimée, a truly effortless knit by Kim Hargreaves. Since I’m not supposed to put any weight on my foot or walk for another five weeks, I’m pretty much out of work, as real estate is all about showing houses to clients, door knocking, and face-to-face meetings. So I have a bunch of time to knit, and I started this fun project to serve as a rest for my hands while knitting Arielle in superfine yarn on my size two needles. And there are so many fun ways to drape this knit!

 

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I have always adored the finer yarn, Kidsilk Haze, but I found her sister, Kidsilk Aura, almost as fun to knit with. There is something so soft and cuddly about this yarn, and the sheen from the silk thread is truly amazing. Once the weather turns cold, this will be the perfect cape to snuggle into! One of the fun things about knitting nowadays is that I’m giving myself permission to branch out from my earlier, limiting obsession with retro styles to make instead modern knits that look good with the other items in my wardrobe. Perhaps I’ve grown up! Now I’ve been emboldened to take this style experiment one step further by dabbling with the latest trends. Has anyone noticed the huge proliferation of capes, ponchos and cloaks on the Fall runways?

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Yves Saint Laurent 

Capes are not for everyone, but I’ve always been a secret fan, and here is a wonderful opportunity to indulge.  What I love about the capelet form is that it provides a great punch of color without swallowing one up in a huge swath of fabric. Here in mild coastal California, there’s no need for a giant blanket of a coat. All I need is something soft and pretty to keep my neck and arms warm when I go out on a dinner date with my husband.

 I am really pleased with how well Aimee goes with this dress. It’s a wacky and wonderful creation from the maverick Italian designers, Save the Queen. I stumbled onto a piece of theirs years ago at the sublime hole-in-the wall boutique, Morning Glory in Burlingame, and have been trying to find a way to buy their clothing (and to afford it) ever since. The company only has 3 stores in the world—Rome, Florence and Paris, and only a small trickle of their fashions show up in the U.S. I had to order this dress through a discount outlet on ebay, which is always a risk, and I was a bit confounded when it arrived in person. The combination of the fabulous print, ruching in the skirt, black lace embellishment, and off-the shoulder sleeve is a bit over the top and produces almost a costume effect.

The profusion of embellisments and colors as well as the historical drama of this dress need to be toned down for normal wear, say for a dinner at the Chez Panisse café on my wedding anniversary which is coming up in late September. I think my capelet teams with the dress beautifully, taming its wackiness without sacrificing any of the beauty of the original piece.

Now that I’ve had so much fun knitting this capelet, I’d love to try a more ambitious project: A longer cape, in the style of this stunner by Loro Piana Sloane, which is selling for about $1,500 at Neiman Marcus right now:

 

It would be so great to find some way to knit a piece like this and make sure it fit me plus save oodles of money (let's face it, who has $1500 to spend on a cape?) Unfortunately, in the time-honored tradition of bulky and unflattering knitting patterns that have doomed us for so long, all the full cloak/cape patterns I am seeing in the Ravelry database not to mention this fall's knit magazines are voluminous, bat-like creations without any means of cinching the darned thing in at the waist. Otherwise, you go back to the tiny-mini capes that don't have the drama of a full cape at all. The only fitted cape I have found that has any waist-belting possibilities is this Rowan design, Brodie, but it has a decidedly 70’s vibe.

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Oh well. Arielle is going very slowly anyway, and I’ve got to tackle the other Kim Hargreaves designs in my queue while the KAL lasts!