Saturday, November 1, 2008

Square-In-A-Square


I was reminded by an online friend that November is NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). So I thought I would use that as an excuse to finally get this blog started. It has been sitting here semi-set up, but with no blog entries for quite some time.

My thought to begin with is to post my designs, starting with some of the "themes" I have developed in my work. The very first design I had published ended up on the cover of Vogue Knitting magazine (how do you like that for beginner's luck)! This established what I have come to think of as my "Square-in-a-Square" theme. It was inspired by my love of Noro Kureyon yarn and also by Mags Kandis' squares (although her's are much smaller than mine).

[For the record, and for those of you keeping track, I actually submitted two designs to VK. These were the very 1st two designs I had ever submitted anywhere. Both were accepted and appeared in this issue of the magazine.]

I wanted to make a design which took advantage of the long color runs of the Kureyon yarn in more than one way in one garment. And so I came up with the scarf known in VK as the "Multi-Pink Scarf" which appeared on the cover of Vogue Knitting Winter 2003/04, and also in the book "Vogue Knitting Accessorize".

The border of the scarf is done in seed stitch and is made using the intarsia method. This causes the color runs to be stretched out very loooong. The squares on the ends are made by separating each color run and making it into a bobbin (or butterfly--I prefer butterflies when doing instarsia, but that's just me). There was no rhyme or reason as to how I laid out the colors for the squares; it was just what looked pleasing to me and created enough color contrast between the inner and outer squares. Then the main body of the scarf was just knit from the ball as it came. This created much shorter color runs.

My next post will feature another "Square-in-a-Square" item.

3 comments:

"Skipper" said...

Hiya! I'm a fellow NaBloPoMo knitter, and I just came by to check out your blog and wish you well with the 'post-a-day' business. Love the square-in-a-square idea too (although I'm saving the Noro currently in my stash for socks)! :-)

jagent designs said...

Thanks for checking out my blog, skipper! I have some Noro I am hoarding too--not exactly sure what it's going to become... -jill

Jacqueline F. said...

Hi Jill -- I found your website from your Ravelry profile. I'm trying to locate the pattern for your Multi-Pink Scarf that appeared the VK Knitting Winter 2003/04 -- would you happen to how where I can find a copy? Thanks very much. Jackie (my email address is chaaqarah@hotmail.com)