Thursday 25 August 2011

The Thrice Knitted Jumper

Despite the heat of summer, earlier this year I bought some beautiful hand dyed wool from Rainbow Wools. It was multicoloured in various hues of blue and green with flecks of maroon and it reminded me of the gemstone Opal. It was love at first sight and I just had to have it!

I have always shied away from knitting with variegated wool because of the 'tiger striping' effect which can occur when it is knitted up. I wanted a pattern that would enhance the wool and it took me several goes before I found the right pattern.

My first attempt was to try cables but the pattern itself was too dominating ....

Then I tried a mock rib stitch..... this was better, but the end result was a rather stiff and heavy jumper. I simply had to undo it and try again.

Whilst flicking through my Mum's vast collection of knitting patterns I stumbled across this rather fetching 1980's drop shoulder, cowl-neck sweater from a pattern book called Crucci Greatest Hits - Volume Seven. How could I resist a jumper which came from a pattern book which sounded more like a night club compilation than a knitting book :)

(plus the pattern met my prerequisite of having a high neck - most important for surviving cold winters in the Southern Tablelands- and it has a pocket!)

This is the end result - the double moss stitch beautifully enhances the colours in the variegated wool. The knitted fabric is much softer than the mock rib stitch and the pattern works perfectly with the dropped sleeves. Knitting my first pocket was fun too!

Phew! Well, those skeins of wool turned out to be very good value since I knitted the equivalent of three jumpers from the wool!

Now that I have completed this knitting project I have now turned my attentions to another hand dyed raspberry and chocolate variegated yarn - wish me luck!

Thursday 18 August 2011

Nets Exhibition at Barometer Gallery

I was lucky enough to have my work Necklace (below) selected to be part of a group textile exhibition which has been shown as part of the VI International Biennial Contemporary Textile Art in Oaxaca in Mexico earlier this year.

Necklace is knitted from recycled plastic bags and then heat is applied to make the fabric rigid. More details can be found in an earlier post on my blog. Click here to go to the post.


The exhibition has travelled back to Australia and was on show at the Barometer Gallery in Sydney in early August 2011. Artists involved in the show are: Catherine Dabron, Wendy Dodd, Gabriella Hegyes, Paula Hilyard, Barbara Jackson, Liz Jeneid, Lynne Johnson, Valerie Kirk, Jenny Manning, Maryanne Mussared, Marli Popple, Nancy Tingey, Monique Van Nieuwland and Katherine White.

Images of the Barometer exhibition are courtesy of Valerie Kirk.








Tuesday 9 August 2011

Featured in Style

The lovely ladies at Style Magazine, the essential lifestyle guide for rural and regional NSW, made the journey to visit us at the Handmade Markets, Canberra in June this year.

They dropped by to say hi - and it was lovely to meet them face to face after communicating by email....



I think they might've had a lot of fun discovering all the lovely handmade things at the markets :)

They even published a picture of my cushions (bottom of page 55).

Click on the images for a larger image if you would like to read the article.

Enjoy! x

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