Fashion: Yarn Style

A Yarn Gift from France + New Anny Blatt patterns

 

Venice Veste by Anny Blatt

http://www.annyblatt.com/boutique/femme/67-veste/2977-venice-veste/

 

I have been obsessed with Anny Blatt’s Venice Veste for some time, but the yarn was not available when I visited Paris, so I thought I was out of luck. But fortune has smiled on me! My father spent the month of June in Berlin, and hopped over to France for a few days to visit with friends. He texted me from France asking me if I wanted him to buy me some yarn. Did I WANT a gift of yarn? Does a fish have scales? Even better, he was able to get the yarn at a great price because of the Grandes Soldes. The Grandes Soldes refer to the two huge sales in Paris every year, one at the end of June, and one in January. Almost everything is discounted at that time and you can find amazing deals IF you are willing to battle the frenzy of ruthless shoppers all reaching for the same item as you!

 

Anny Blatt Fine Kid, Bouton d’Or Mango

 

As you can see, this was an amazing yarn gift! The Venice Veste uses a slip-stitch pattern that is knitted with one strand of fine kid yarn and another strand of a slightly lighter colored blue yarn held together.

 

Originally the pattern called for Anny Blatt Luxor, but that was out of stock, and my friend Fabienne, who works at the Paris shop Modes et Travaux, told me I could use the Mango yarn by Bouton d'Or instead, as it is the same color. She was really kind in responding to my emails and setting the yarn aside for my father so there would be enough for my project. 

In case you are wondering why the Mango yarn is so tangled, it fell afoul of an international baggage inspector who apparently rifled through my father's luggage, it looked much better before its journey to me! There are other yarns involved in the Venice Veste as well. The jacket is edged with two black yarns that act as trim, the Anny Blatt Muguet and the Anny Blatt Victoria:

I had purchased those two yarns previously, thinking I might be able to find an American yarn to substitute for the blue skeins in the pattern. But luckily I can knit with the very best, I am so excited to begin!

 

Of course gorgeous new designs keep popping up all the time just to make our choices more difficult:

 

 

Anny Blatt has just come out with a new collection of knitting designs for Fall/Winter, called the Couture Collection 219, and there are some beautiful patterns! Knowing my houndstooth pattern obsession, you can see why this is my favorite:

Gobelin by Anny Blatt

 

You can find information about this sweater and all the other designs from the magazine that will follow here:

http://www.annyblatt-aiguillesdor.com/

 

There are many beautiful designs but I am only sharing a few of them with you. One of my favorites is a beautiful fair isle sweater with a twist on the damask pattern:

Charenton

 

And look at this innovative use of a cables in this luxe jacket:

Odeon

Here is a zip-up Chanel-style jacket for everyday work wear:

Louvre

 

And a fabulous variation on the checked patterns that are still so hot on the runways:

Perenty

 

I also love the use of the herringbone pattern in this cool, modern pullover:

Cadet

 

Unlike the Anny Blatt website, which charged me an arm and a leg to ship the last magazine I purchased, Aiguilles d’Or seems to have a more reasonable shipping fee—it was 11 Euros, so the magazine plus shipping was a total of $29. Assuming it gets to me safely, I will likely purchase other magazines in future from them. In the meantime, Happy Knitting everyone!

 

 

The Row not Knitted: Blog Hop!

 

 

Well, I am flattered! A wonderful knitter, Miss Agnes, has invited me to join in a blog hop (in French: saute blog). The idea of a hop is to discover great new blogs. Each of us muses on knitting in response to a few questions and recommends three other blogs they love. Speaking of which, you can find Miss Agnes’ blog written in French and English here: 

http://readytoknit.com/

I titled this post, The Row not Knitted, because just like the poem, The Road not Taken, I think as knitters we make certain choices that determine the fate of the things we make. More about this below...

 

Question One: What am I working on?

 

La Boheme by Marie Wallin

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/la-boheme-2 

My version of La Boheme will become a fabulous short-sleeved top using these yarns:

Rowan kidsilk haze & Anchor metallic, Classic Elite Silky Alpace Lace

 

I am preparing for La Boheme by making this practice square:

 

 

Whenever I start a fair isle project or want to practice a technique, I use my scrap yarn to knit a square. Once I have completed nine squares, I assemble them into a baby blanket. It is a great way to motivate yourself to prepare thoroughly to make a successful sweater, because you are not wasting your practice square. Instead, you will get a great end result in a few years when you collect your finished sections into an afghan. This will be my ninth square, so as soon as it's finished, it will become the name section of a blanket for a lovely little two year old girl. Here are a few of the other squares:

 

Once I feel confident of my grasp of the design through my practice square, I knit a tension swatch in the required yarn. In the case of La Boheme, kidsilk haze is almost impossible to unravel so it pays to practice with another yarn first. Because of all this practice, I have identified the important areas for me to track for accuracy as I knit, such as the curlique ends of the damask pattern and the center point of the snowflake-like motif. Identifying the “anchor points” of a lace or fair isle pattern in advance helps to avoid making mistakes as one works up the chart.

 

 

Question Two: How does my work differ from others of its genre?

 My blog explores the goal of knitting wearable garments that can be treasured as heirlooms. I started this blog to perform a knitting makeover that would transform my knits from craft projects into clothes. You can read about the knitting makeover here:

http://yarnstylist.com/2009/09/time-for-a-knitting-makeover.html

 

If you are interested in your own knitting makeover, here is how  you determine wearability in advance. Just answer the following three questions:

<        1.    What are the strengths of your figure?

(yarnstylist example: “hourglass” or “cello” shape)

extra waist shaping emphasizes an hourglass

 

       2.    What weaknesses would you like your clothes to hide?

        (yarnstylist example: broad upper arms)

broad cap sleeves make upper arms look smaller by comparison

 

3. What colors flatter you the most?

(yarnstylist example: An “exotic winter” is most flattered by high contrast colors combined together)

Combined Black and white emphasize dark hair & light skin

 

To ensure the wearability of your knitting, start with a clear sense of your physical attributes and evaluate designs accordingly. If they don’t fulfill all of my criteria, I pass them by. That is why I titled this post, “The Row Not Knitted”. Ravelry is filled with temptations, but we have to stay strong and walk away from them! Do you remember the makeover show, “What Not to Wear”? Great style is all about the things we do NOT choose to knit. True, one does not see a ton of hoochy mamas on Ravelry like the infamous ladies on "What not to Wear", but there are plenty of dowdy sweaters, and plenty of unsuitable designs as well. If you just have to have that insanely intricate cable pattern or color work design that will add twenty pounds visually to you, don’t make yourself into a walking tapestry, knit a blanket or pillow instead!

 

Why do I write/create what I do?

Craft work is often undervalued in our society. As a result, I think some knitters do not appreciate their own skills and discernment. Although collecting paintings as a response to the beauty of color and design is admired, collecting yarn is not, and most knitters seem to feel guilty about it. There are entire groups on Ravelry devoted to getting rid of one’s stash as if it were some sort of plague. Some of these knitters obsessively track how many yards of their yarn they have “used up” per month. I guilted myself into measuring my yardage usage for a year until I felt as if I were working on an assembly line. Posts like, "I broke down and bought a ball of yarn. Hangs head in shame", or “I used up 1,000 yards of green merino, hah hah!" in the forums began to strike me as a bit odd. Do painters brag about the number of ounces of water color used? The very idea is absurd!

 

Imagine this letter from Van Gogh to his brother about Starry Night over the Rhone: “Ha ha, I depleted five ounces of blue, three of yellow and two of white. Oh, by the way, it was a painting of the night sky.”   !!!!!!!!!!

 

Just like a painter strives to capture the quality of light or the heart of a subject, we knitters use our materials to capture a beautiful, elusive quality that means something important to us. I spent three months knitting my Gabrielle because the white, pink and silver hues conveyed an angelic feeling to me:

 

 

Although it is all too tempting to crank out knitting projects like packaged kits on an assembly line, we are not being paid for this. We are knitting for our own pleasure. And an heirloom knitting approach allows us to value ourselves as artists, indulging our creativity with color, texture and design to our heart’s content.

 

Question Four: How does my writing/creative process work?

 

I taught writing to non-native speakers of English for ten years, and of course drafting was an important tool for my students to improve their writing and grammar, so I got in the habit of doing it too. I tend to start with a very rough draft or a few images and build from there. With my historical novel which I plan to self-publish, since my literary agent was not able to sell it to a conventional publisher, I think I went through about 10 drafts. Blogging is much easier. It is quite liberating from the constraints of normal composition, since one can rely more on images to convey emotions and thoughts. Here is an image that inspired my historical novel about the thefts of Ancient Egyptian artefacts —it is a gold coin imprinted with Queen Cleopatra’s profile.

 

 

Let’s keep the Blog Hop going! Here are three other wonderful blogs:

    1.    Ravelry’s Kellydawn has a wonderful regular feature called “Wearability Wednesdays” on her blog, in which she describes her adventures wearing her knits in real life:

http://knitigatingcircumstances.wordpress.com/

 

    2.    Ravelry’s Kristenlynnea wears her knits almost daily, and blogs about knitting, gardening and entertaining here:

 

http://www.knitionary.blogspot.com/

 

<    3.    Ravelry’s Dayana takes a true heirloom approach to knitting advanced projects and shares all her tips and tricks here:

http://www.dayanaknits.com/

 

 

Voilà, The Dior Jacket

 

 

 

 

Voilà! My Dior jacket is finished! I am really pleased with how my slip

 

stitch pattern recreates the look of a woven fabric. Ever since the

 

moment I saw Rowan frost yarn in the “Moorland” colorway, I knew I

 

could use it to create a couture-inspired fabric. Chanel textiles, for

 

example, often have metallic threads that range in subtle variations 

 

of color. Framing subtle color changes against a dark background 

 

enhances their water-color effect and reminds me of the dappled

 

light in an impressionist painting.

 

 

 

 

When Rowan came out with black kidsilk haze eclipse last year, I 

 

had the perfect black foil for the variegated golds, pinks and 

 

greens that shimmer through the black finish of the Frost yarn.

 

 

 

My choice of the rectangular shapes in the slip stitch pattern I

 

invented was inspired by this ornate doorway I saw in Paris:

 

 

 

 

The shape of the Peplum jacket is inspired by Debby Bliss’s 

 

pattern #8, which you can find here:

 

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/sources/debbie-bliss-knitting-magazine-fall-winter-2013

 

Debbie Bliss’s pattern creates a peplum shape by starting with 

 

a large number of stitches and decreasing them in batches of

 

six stitches per row every inch or so to the waist. As you can

 

imagine, it was challenging to decrease so many stitches per 

 

row without disturbing the overall pattern, but the slip stitch 

 

combination I invented is amenable to hiding a series of 

 

reductions without them being terribly visible, as you can see

 

from the back view here:

 

 

 

The fuzziness of the mohair yarn and the black background both

 

contribute to helping conceal the 6 stitches I dropped evenly 

 

across each reduction row. All told, I was able to subtract at 

 

least 30 stitches from hips to waist on the back piece without

 

significantly distorting the slip stitch pattern, which is why

 

I am so enchanted with it! I will definitely be using the slip

 

stitch pattern again for other projects, perhaps in a new

 

pattern using a garment shape that is entirely my own!

 

I did add some extra hand-sewn couture touches to my 

 

jacket, such as the box pleats I hand-sewed on each side 

 

of the front:

 

 

 

The rest of the hand-sewing I used to make my piece a "couture knit"

 

came in to the jacket assembly. Because the slip stitches create a

 

 series of horizontal stripes  of color, I ensured they matched across

 

pieces by pinning every single stripe (and there were three per

 

inch):

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I hand-basted the pieces to each other with blue sewing 

 

thread to ensure the stripes would line up.

 

 

 

Next, as I mattress stitched my pieces together, I took out the 

 

hand-basting threads as I went along.

 

 

 

Here you can see the line of stripes extends across the

 

seam line. Can you tell where the seam starts and ends in the

 

middle of this image?

 

 

 

 

Can you find where the sleeve is joined to the back piece?

 

 

As you can see, basting, then pinning each stripe allowed me

 

to create a continuous-looking fabric which meant that the stripes

 

on the sleeves lined up with the stripes on the back and so on.

 

After I finished each seam, I enhanced the continuous effect of the

 

stripes as follows: I turned the garment inside out and steamed

 

the seams by holding an iron over them without touching them.

 

 Then I flattened the seams by pressing an iron over two layers of

 

press cloth on the wrong side of the fabric.

 

 

 

The collar involved quite a bit of frustrating fiddling and I do 

 

not think I will really get any better with my collar construction 

 

until I take some sewing classes to enhance my understanding

 

of the shapes I should be striving to construct. I found the

 

neckline to be the nemesis of my Emerald Chanel-style jacket:

 

 

 

http://www.ravelry.com/projects/yarnstylist/emerald-blocks

 

 

Unfortunately, I had blindly followed the knitting pattern, only to 

 

discover after I hand-quilted all the pieces and assembled them 

 

that the neckline was far too low:

 

 

 

This meant that I had to add a stand-up collar as an after-

 

 thought, but the jacket only really looks right if I wear it with

 

 the collar standing up, as in this photo:

 

 

This time, I was determined to avoid that pitfall! So when I was

 

halfway through my project, I basted my front and back 

 

pieces together as soon as they were finished to assess the

 

neckline height. The result?

 

 

Way too low!

 

I would like to say in my own defense that I followed the pattern

 

just as written--the neck is supposed to be on a level with the 

 

start of the armhole shaping. But in real life, on my frame, a neckline

 

this low just looks bizarre. No wonder so many knitters on Ravelry

 

complained about the collar. The problem isn't actually the collar,

 

I think, it is the height of the neckline. How glad I am that I took

 

this precaution after being burned by a collar problem before!

 

I found it particularly helpful to study a photograph and use

 

it to determine how far I should raise the neckline to fit my

 

physique. After raising the neckline several inches, I was much 

 

happier with the fit.

 

 

 

 

However, as another precaution, I knitted half the collar 

 

separately and pinned it onto my basted pieces to test the fit. 

 

The great benefit of making the collar as a separate piece is that

 

it allowed me to experiment with the right side and wrong side 

 

of the fabric to see which suited the garment better—I chose the 

 

wrong side of the fabric for my collar which creates a subtle 

 

contrast to the textile used in the rest of the jacket. Still, 

 

something was not quite right. I realized that the shape of the

 

neckline created a deep U, which underneath my square

 

shaped jaw, seemed to create an unflattering frame for my face.

 

To read more about how to manipulate neckines to flatter your 

 

faceshape, read my blog post here:

 

 

http://yarnstylist.com/2009/09/knitting-and-your-face-shape.html

 

 

I reconfigured the collar and raised it to form a different shape 

 

which frames my face better. Do you see the reverse oval I 

 

created? The oval softens the square line of my jaw:

 

 

 

 

These heirloom projects on average take 3 months to complete, 

 

but I don’t mind taking the extra time. Ever since I saw Chanel’s

 

2012 Fall Winter Couture fashion show, I have been obsessed with

 

the beautiful subtle variations in color and texture in the jackets

 

I saw, and I have wanted one of my own.

 

 

 

Considering that the overage couture jacket by Chanel would cost

 

somewhere between $8,000 and $12,000, I feel that three months 

 

and $120 worth of materials is reasonable to spend to make

 

my own couture-inspired clothes.

 

 

 

Readers, tell me what you think. Should I make a belt out of the 

 

wrong side of the fabric to match the collar of the jacket and

 

bring  the waist in more? Even though I reduced 30 stitches on

 

the front and back to create waist shaping I wonder if the jacket 

 

is still loose around the waist. Or will a belt detract from the shape

 

 of the jacket? What do you think?

 

 

 

Adventures with Heirloom Knitting: The Dior Jacket

 

 

My Dior jacket is inspired by Paris architecture. I wrote about this recently in my post about the beauty of the doors of Paris.

http://yarnstylist.com/2014/05/the-doors-of-paris-an-inspiration-for-knitted-texture.html

I love the way that the door to the Parisian building is an art piece in itself, created to beckon the viewer, “if you think this is beautiful, wait till you see what is inside.” What a wonderful idea to apply to one’s clothing! I would like to enfold myself in a jacket that beckons the viewer, like the door above, with an image of subtle elegance. So I have been experimenting with slip stitch patterns in order to create a similar effect.

 

 

 

I am enraptured by this slip stitch pattern, which I created through experimentation, using the Rowan yarns Frost and Kidsilk Eclipse and Debbie Bliss’ Rialto 4ply. Figuring out how to create a couture-style suit using this fabric has been a challenge, but it does have wonderful drape. The fabric is beautiful from the wrong-side also, as you can see from this photo, where the right side and wrong side are both exposed:

 

 

One of my favorite aspects of couture is the visually layered effect that is often created by combining several woven fabrics in the same shades, so I am taking advantage of the right side/wrong side of my slip stitch fabric in the construction of my Dior Jacket. I am using the wrong side to create the collar, accent cuff and belt, and the right side for everything else. Depending on how ambitious I am, I may attempt a skirt out of the wrong-side fabric as well. Here is my work in progress so far:

 

 

The jacket is edged with a double thread of Rowan kidsilk haze eclipse

Then the cast off row is knitted using Anny Blatt muguet.

 

 

http://www.annyblatt.com/boutique/fils/24-muguet/592-muguet-noir/

 

I have mentioned the Muguet yarn several times in my posts about Chanel-style knits. Anny Blatt has a stable of designs that emulate Chanel jackets, and so they offer more yarns than any other company I have found that can be used effectively for trims for couture-style jackets.

 

 

The Muguet has a metallic sheen and eyelash structure which both emulate the style of trim that some designers are using currently in couture, and so it can be a great choice AS LONG AS IT IS NOT OVERUSED! By casting off in the Muguet only, I limit its use to only one row of the edging, which allows it to pop without dominating the piece. Since the other yarns in my textile are also fuzzy mohair yarns, and both have a sheen, the eyelash texture and metallic shine of the Muguet blends with them, simply adding an extra level of intensity. However, I would never recommend using it as a trim for a smooth fabric, such as a cotton or silk. The contrast between the two textures would be too extreme and it would make the piece look cheap.

 

 

 

I don’t have much time for knitting these days, because our Santa Rosa plums have all ripened at once! Every year we get a huge crop, with all of them ripening simultaneously, and then I’m hard put to find a use for them all. So far, I have made two batches of plum caramel sauce and two batches of plum icecream:

 

 

The egg whites left over from the icecream custard have been made into meringues:

 

 

And I have a disk of paté sucre in the fridge ready to be rolled out for the bottom crust of a plum tart. Next will be the batches of strawberry plum pies, which I make at least half a dozen of and freeze every year so I can bake them on demand.

 

 

The most challenging thing about cooking with my Santa Rosa plums is that they are tart as a general rule, but some are much more so than others. So, whereas my first batch of plum icecream turned out perfectly, my second batch is a bit on the sour side. I will have to serve it swirled together with vanilla icecream to take the edge off of the tannic fruit flavor. This is why I mix them with strawberries in my pies as well. Ah, the sweets of summer.