Fashion: Yarn Style

Top Fashion Trends for Fall: Houndstooth Knits

 

Here it is, the most exciting Fall/Winter fashion trend for 2013 for us knitters--Houndstooth!

 

Houndstooth was everywhere on the fashion runways, and now is flooding the department stores! I have seen it on everything-- skirts, jackets, and even fabulous fur wraps, like the amazing Michael Kors stole pictured above. Houndstooth in mink, can you imagine? Luckily for us knitters there is another way to get this effect that avoids both the expense and the animal pelts! I'm talking about colorwork knitting. The houndstooth pattern is not hard to master, just a little stranding with yarn and a color chart is all you need to get a fabulous wrap or skirt or top at a fraction of the cost!

 

The elegance of Houndstooth first caught my eye when I discovered a vintage photo book of Chanel. The photographs of her artistry with houndstooth in black and white or beige and white was a revelation to me:

 

 

The above houndstooth jacket, circa 2006, is truly divine, is it not?

But it was the designer Mondo Guerrera, Project Runway Season 8 contestant who made me see how fun and playful the simple motif could be. In the Jacqueline Onassis tribute challenge, Mondo created a vibrant joyful yet superbly elegant look with a magnified purple houndstooth skirt.

 

He paired the skirt with a bold black and white striped top and leather-trimmed black jacket lined with purple. I believe the fierce judge Nina Garcia sighed in rapture at the gorgeousness of it all. And check out the designer himself, wearing houndstooth socks!

 

 

 Mondo demonstrated that houndstooth is not only classic, it can be cool as well. He proved this again with this final challenge dress, a super sexy black and white number that featured color blocking in houndstooth and tweed, again with leather trim.

 

The ultra short skirt and clever mix of tweeds makes this design really chic. Clearly, Mondo was way ahead of his time because this look is everywhere now, including the black leather trim and magnified houndstooth pattern. I was able to snap up this fabulous skirt at Nordstrom as a birthday gift to myself this September:

 

 

And now I just need to knit a fabulous houndstooth top to match! I think I’m going to make it a peplum top with a teeny tiny houndtooth pattern and contrast edging in silver and black. Perhaps you are saying to yourself, houndstooth on top of houndstooth, isn't that too much? Perhaps it is, but I am obsessed I tell you, I can't help myself!!

 

Luckily, some knitting designers are creating amazing pieces that capitalize on the houndstooth trend, and my favorite is the French designer Anny Blatt. My top pick from their No 217 Couture Collection this fall: The Dinky Pull.

 

 

Can you say retro chic? The minute I saw this, it was a love at first sight. I had to knit this top! No matter that the instructions were in French, the yarn wasn't carried by any store I knew, and the shipping fee just to import this thin magazine to the US was a ridiculous sum. Hmm, I thought, this is just my luck that I just received some birthday yarn money that makes this ridiculous flight of fancy possible. Luckily, after I spent half my yarn budget on shipping for the magazine, I happened to have some white angora haze yarn in my stash, and was able to find some black angora haze at a greatly discounted rate. In order to get a dk weight gauge with this fingering weight yarn, I am doubling the black and white angora with black and white kidsilk haze I have left over in my stash. This prevents a double thickness of angora, which would be unbearably warm in my temperate Californian climate. As for the French instructions? With the help of the Tricot and Co group on Ravelry, I have been puzzling through parts of it, and guessing the rest.

 

Here is my completed back piece, unblocked:

 

 

This is one of the most delightful fairisle patterns I have ever knitted. The angora yarn is so soft in my hands and the houndstooth pattern is so amusing! My biggest fear is that washing will create a bit of color bleeding, so I am wash testing my gauge swatch before I lay a hand on this large back piece! Here is a closeup of the houndstooth pattern:

 

 

For anyone interested in making a houndstooth coat there is another fabulous possibility: the Cornelian Manteau, also from Anny Blatt:

 

 

Or the Anny Blatt Arch Veste, also from the same magazine:

 

 

To be honest, I want to knit all of these pieces, but I only have two hands and a limited yarn budget and some of these yarns seem a bit out of my reach.

 

Whereas the Anny Blatt houndstooth designs are cutting edge with their use of angora and metallic yarns, Kim Hargreaves takes a more traditional approach using tweed yarn for her houndstooth blazer in her new fall/winter book, Smoulder. The name of the jacket is Honour, and it is knitted in Rowan felted tweed.

 

 

 I made an initial try at knitting Honour with some yarn in my stash, but I had to use a smooth yarn because I didn't have the felted tweed and so the fabric lost its edge. Instead, the small houndstooth print seemed so subdued and conservative in contrast with the vibrant playfulness of the Dinky Pull, that I gave it up. However, I am thinking that the tiny, more conservative houndstooth in Honour in the smooth yarn would be a perfect compliment to my houndstooth skirt, and would work better as a top. It will be fun to experiment with the yarn and pattern combination to create a top that fits my skirt! And if the houndstooth on top of houndstooth turns out to be too much, I can always go “mondo” with it and make a black and grey striped top to go with the houndstooth skirt instead, like his Jackie O look!

 

Do any of you have a favorite houndstooth pattern? If so, please share it in the comments section!

 

 

 

 

 

Madame Butterfly & Adventures Knitting with Metallic Yarn

 

To me, this is the ultimate Princess fantasy knit. Not the castle in the background? Now that I have completed my Madame Butterfly I feel rather cheated that this castle doesn’t come along as an accessory!

 

I have been wanting to knit a metallic sweater for years, ever since Chanel started producing fabulous silver couture jackets and pullovers in their couture collections.

 

 

Not to mention all the silver accessories!

 

Unfortunately, my first attempt to knit with metallic yarn was a complete failure. I doubled the old Rowan shimmer yarn which was a bright silver, in order to knit a tank-style sweater I planned to wear Christmas eve.

 

The effect was crunchy and tough on the hands while knitting and yielded a fabric that was unpleasantly scratchy against the skin. The overall fabric looked pretty cheap, and I unraveled it before I completed the back piece. To have spent a good $60 dollars on yarn only to produce a “hoochie”-type top that belonged in a dollar store was a severe disappointment.

 

After this learning experience, I resolved to stay away from purely metallic yarn and to instead use yarn with a metallic thread plied together with a natural yarn to give it better depth, texture and appearance. I found a winner in the Schulana moscu yarn:

 

 

The mix of metallic and mohair was a perfect balance, and the yarn added a dark beauty to the trim of my Coco, a Chanel-inspired cardigan. Unlike the shimmer yarn, the schulana mosco looked quite expensive and gave an elegant finish to the edges of the garment:

 

 

Last year, the Chanel couture runway show got me thinking of metallic yarns again. As their couture designs featured a gorgeous mix of black, silver, and pink with hand-woven textiles that screamed luxury.

 

 

I was so enthralled by the gorgeous textiles that I saw that I vowed to recreate one of them, and I chose this V-neck top:

 

 

But how to recreate this shimmery fabric in white, silver and pink? After much swatching, I discovered the Rowan shimmer could be tamed by pairing it with a strand of white Kidsilk Haze. The kidsilk softened the fabric of the Shimmer, and the white also softened the overly artificial metallic sheen of the yarn making it look more expensive. However, the Shimmer yarn loves to unravel, so the only way I could work with the color changes was to sew in the ends immediately after each row. Otherwise, the metal ends would unravel into long thin strands that snagged on everything and made me worry about the integrity of the knitted fabric. I also used a generous amount of the chemical  “Fray Check” on the ends as well as the crocheted braid that incorporated the shimmer yarn to keep the strands from dissolving. In the end, my Gabrielle was a great success, due partly to the little metallic glints that came through the slip stitch pattern, providing a little glimpse but not too much metallic flavor.

 

 

Would I ever knit with the Shimmer yarn alone now that I have tried it in two projects? Absolutely not. But it has been discontinued and replaced with a better yarn anyway. Rowan has improved their metallic yarn now, replacing Shimmer with the Anchor artiste metallic. The new Rowan Magazine 54 is filled with designs taking advantage of this new super metallic yarn. Madame Butterfly is a prime example.

 

Empowered by my successful experience in the past pairing a metal yarn with kidsilk haze, I immediately pounced on the Madame Butterfly pattern when it came out. I am happy to say that the new Anchor Artiste Metallic is much sturdier and less prone to fraying than the old Shimmer, and it creates a more expensive looking fabric. In Madame Butterfly, the metal is never knitted alone, but is always paired with kidsilk haze, so the pattern writer really understood how to manage the yarn. I would strongly advise against trying to wind the metal and kidsilk haze together into a ball—their tensions are extremely different and they fight with each other, so the balls need to be kept separate and a strong tension needs to be asserted on both threads at all times to create a smooth fabric. It is not easy on the hands, but it is worth it in the end.

 

 

Don’t you love the sheer panels of kidsilk haze above the bust line? I thought it was very clever the way the metal yarn was used to make the garment opaque in the body of the sweater so there is no need to wear a camisole underneath. The resulting fabric from combining the two yarns is surprisingly comfortable and soft, although it was still crunchy to knit the metal yarn. There was no need to immediately weave the ends in either, as I had to with my old Shimmer.

 

The main modification I made to the pattern was to move the waist tie to the back. Honestly, the tie in front with all of that fabric at the waist seemed insane to most of the knitters that I discussed the pattern with. The actual pattern contains no waist shaping, and so there would be 42 inches of fabric gathered at the waist if you were to knit a size medium. Imagine all of that fabric bunching right under the bust line! If you are busty as well, the danger would be of creating a seeming “monoboob” extending from the top of your chest to your middle, which would be highly unflattering! Instead, I added quite a bit of waist shaping to the pattern so that the gathering due to the ribbon sash was minimal, and the openings for the sash was moved to the back.

 

 

The best part about the tie is that you can wear the sweater loosely if you want:

 

 

Or you can use the sash to cinch the top in at the waist to create an hourglass:

 

 

The sleeves were trimmed with crocheted ruffles, executed with a series of double crochets into each stitch.

 

 

You see, the fabric is soft enough that even the kittens don’t mind snuggling up to it!

 

I love knitting with the anchor artiste metallic and I would definitely use it again. But I’m still not sure if it is a good idea to knit it alone. Metallic yarns have a way of looking cheap unless they are paired with a natural fiber, in my opinion.

Tips for Making Plaid Using Duplicate Stitch

 

After I finished Striven, my husband took me to Bean Hollow, a fabulous beach outside of Pescadero, to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Somehow I feel this jacket is exactly suited to an ocean setting—the rough hewn rocks and sun bronzed ice plant and the deep blue of the ocean seemed to reflect all of the colors in the jacket.

 

But who am I kidding? I'm happy wearing Striven at the beach because its the only place in our darned temperate climate where I actually need something woolen to keep me warm! Ah the curse of being an avid wool knitter in sunny California.

 

We had a wonderful meal at Sams’ Chowder House further north in El Granada—Sam’s has become so popular because of their delicious New England style clam chowder and lobster roll that you now have to book a reservation way in advance! Here is a photo provided by the restaurant of their views at night--truly spectacular! 

 

Not for us plebeians a night reservation, however. Due to the restaurant being so booked up, we had to settle for a nice lunch. Afterwards, we strolled out onto the harbor and looked out over the fishing boats. What a lovely time that was! However, it is one thing to dine in relaxation at a great seafood restaurant but then when you go outside and see the fishermen and their boats you start to appreciate the hard work and danger that went into the lovely meal that you just had. Crab is one of the delicacies of the coast, and crab fishery is quite a dangerous job from what I hear. It just goes to show that for every beautiful experience one has in life, there is a fair amount of thought and craft behind it.

 

Take the embroidery in Striven, for instance. Embroidery is a tricky business. The reason I like knitting is that it is an inexact science—you do not have to hold your needles perfectly even all of the time in order to get a good result. Embroidery is less forgiving. The stitches are raised and colored in contrast with the background, so they really stand out. But the textured, flecked tweed fabric of Striven was a dream for an inexperienced embroiderer like me to tackle, as the colors all ended up melting together a bit like an impressionist painting.

 

Most of us have done a tiny bit of duplicate stitching here and there to fill in a bad hole in a sweater, but embroidering an even vertical line on top of a surface is an entirely different challenge. It is the very verticality of the line that is your worst enemy as it demands symmetry which is difficult to provide with hand stitching. Below are a few reflections on how I coped with this in Striven:

 

Here is what the fabric looked like before I embroidered it:

 

 

I had never embroidered duplicate stitches verticallly before, but I followed the instructions on the following youtube video:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2WpMQNmL8U

 

Anchoring my yarn at the back of the work, I worked one vertical line of embroidery at a time, following markers so I would not get confused. Here is a closeup of my first stitching line:

 

As you can see, my challenge there was to cover up the existing pink stitches with the yellow. the bars of blue inbetween were left intact because those are a natural part of the slipstitch pattern. It is difficult to entirely cover one color with another when using duplicate stitch, because the knitting stitches are more secure and integrated and the embroidery stitches have only one point of attachment from above. That is why the slip stitch background is such a genius idea. Since the background is not solid, but variegated, the eye does not notice if you have completely covered the stitch underneath. The eye is trained to see an indication of a line instead of a whole one because the other lines are broken as well by the slip stitch pattern. This is the only circumstance under which I would feel confident creating a vertical line with embroidery. It is just like a pointillist painting—we are compelled to fill in the dots when we look at shapes and colors and the slip stitch forces you to work harder to fill in the lines that are embroidered on as well.

 

 

 In terms of technique with the duplicate stitching, one thing that I did learn is that it does help, after you insert your needle through the back of the stitch above,

 

 

to pull firmly on the thread before you return it to your point of origin in the center of the stitch below. That way you are hanging your embroidery more firmly and creating a plumper thread line to thoroughly cover the stitch beneath. Putting this tension on all of your embroidery stitches gives them an evenness and also helps them to melt into the fabric, which is the key goal of the plaid creation. My tentative beginning stitches where I had a light touch really stood out as alien to the knitted fabric, not to mention one stitch was longer and the next shorter and so on. Whereas the longer I did the embroidery and the tougher I got with pulling on the threads the better the embroidery integrated into the surface and the neater it looked. Of course you do not want to pull the thread too tightly, as that will defeat your purpose and thin the embroidery stitch, making it impossible for it to cover the color below. I suggest to anyone who is planning to do this duplicate stitching to test-embroider their gauge swatch first for practice.

 

Next up is the Gorgeous Madame Butterfly pattern, from Rowan’s Current Magazine 54. Talk about romance—this is like the ultimate Princess sweater. As you see, the castle is already provided:

 

It has been quite a challenge to get through the knitting combining the metallic yarn with kidsilk haze.

 

 

There is an odd crunchiness to the metallic yarn and it is not at all flexible so it has been hard on my hands. For that reason, I’ve been limiting my knitting to small doses in between other projects. I’m thinking this could be my perfect New Year’s Eve top! And rather like Repunzel in her castle,  it is a lovely dream worth waiting for! 

 

Mad for Knitting Plaid

Plaid is a huge fashion trend for Fall/Winter 2013! Red plaid in particular has been on all the magazine covers lately. I really adore Nicki Minaj's red plaid dress with all of the metallic accessories! The waist shaping gives the almost masculine plaid fabric a sexiness and the sheen of the metal accessories elevates it to high fashion. The minute I saw this I knew I had to find some way to knit a plaid this season.

Isn’t Olivia Wilde's plaid jacket fabulous? She pairs it with skinny jeans to give it more sex appeal. I went recently on a scouting mission to Chanel to get inspired by their fall collection for my future knitting projects and I saw this jacket in person—it looked amazing with the metallic jeweled buttons and braid as contrast trim. Talk about couture plaid, this is ultra chic!

 

Plaid has always had a huge draw for me because of my Scottish heritage but now it is actually fashionable! I was determined to knit my own plaid but I have little experience with Intarsia and the idea of creating the vertical lines of the plaid with multiple bobbins hanging off my knitting filled me with dismay. The last intarsia project I made was a square in a blanket for a friend’s baby and just that tiny piece caused me hours of agony, with bobbins of different colors tangling over each other and creating a royal mess. Ah, but I soon discovered there is another way!

 

Jennie Atkinson, a designer I have always admired, has created a slip-stitch pattern as the base for her plaid jacket, Striven:

 

 

This is a clever approach to  plaid, because it does not require Intarsia. Embroidery is used instead for the vertical lines. The slip stitch fabric created in tweed yarn creates a multi-textured surface which you can embroider vertical stripes onto using duplicate stitch without the embroidery standing out. Usually, the idea of embroidery on knitting intimidates me because when you are adorning a smooth stockinette fabric, every little imperfection of your embroidery shows. But the irregularities of a slip stitch  pattern in tweed are so great that duplicate stitching easily melds into the fabric, holding you to a much lower standard of accuracy regarding the size and consistency of your embroidery stitches.

 

 Can you see the embroidery? Yes and no. It is subtle, isn't it? I really feel that is the genius of the whole design. 

 

I really enjoyed making this jacket! I chose the colors based on my own mental model of a Chanel bracelet in pinks and blues and yellow plaid I saw several years ago. I added waist shaping to the pattern and made the sleeves much more fitted; those were my main modifications.

 

After completing each flat piece, I embroidered the vertical lines on top using duplicate stitch—I loosely used the pattern as a guide but I added additional vertical stitching to get the color effect that I wanted. I do not recommend knitting this jacket in the round as it is much easier to embroider individual pieces.

 

Also it is a more flattering jacket if you can decrease for the waist and then increase for the bust, all of which would be more difficult when knitting in the round in the slip stitch pattern in my opinion. If you look at this piece, you can see all of the shaping that went into it.

 

After embroidering the pieces, I hand washed them to allow the duplicate stitches to melt into the original slip stitch fabric. After washing, you really could not tell where the embroidery ended and the original knitting began. I am really excited about this project, and I felt it was a great beginner’s approach for anyone who is intrigued by the idea of embroidery on top of knitting. Here it is difficult to get in trouble because of the uneven fabric and variegated yarn, which all can hide a multitude of mistakes!

 

To finish the jacket and continue the tribute to my Scottish and Irish heritage, I added Green Man buttons. Green Man is a deity who in legends roamed the British Isles and represented the spirit of rebirth.

 

 

I loved the format of this jacket as it has a toughness that seems appropriate for plaid, which could have been the garb of my highland ancestors, warriors some of them.  There is a quality to the edging and neck shaping that is almost reminiscent of a motorcycle jacket if you wear it buttoned up:

 

If you make a plaid, make sure it has attitude, that is all I'm saying. Plaid has an edge-no wonder it has made the crossover into grunge and punk wear!

 

Anyway, this project was a huge amount of work and I think my momentary craving for plaid has been satisfied. However, I do have my eye on the following plaids for future knitting adventures:

 

1.    Martin Storey’s Tay Tartan:

L    I love the way he incorporates an actual tartan into his design. It just really needs some waist shaping, don't you think?

 

2.    ILisa Richardson’s Dhurrie:

        I adore this and its totally romantic but in sunny Silicon Valley, how will I ever get away with prancing around in this cape?

 

3.    Martin Storey’s Mull:

     This could be adapted into a woman's sweater, don't you think?

 

 

Does anyone have a great plaid knitting pattern to share? If so, please post it in the comments section, especially if it does not require Intarsia!!