Sunday 22 March 2009

Island Life

A perfect early spring week on Alderney,in the Channel Islands, with lots of inspiration for stripe patterns and colours in the natural landscape. We couldn't have been luckier with the weather - ten hours of sunshine nearly every day and no need to put on our overtrousers once!
I knitted a few samples for my course in the evenings, although this time I'm posting some pics of the island itself plus some inspirations for those stripes.

And finally... a sample from a different set of islands, the Falklands, which Other Half visited last month, returning with a pack of 100% Falklands wool in a lovely shade called Pebble. The swatch here has two cable patterns which according to Pam Dawson's book, Traditional Island Knitting, are typical Falklands' designs. I particularly like the double cable pattern below, which I am hoping I can include in a jumper. My tension swatch is slightly off from the pattern in the book, so I'm going to have to do some adapting, which WILL BE GOOD FOR ME!!!

Friday 13 March 2009

Marching On

Here are some examples of the design work that I'm currently doing. The original inspiration was my set of Portmeirion Botanic Garden china and placemats and the heathery colours used in one of the patterns. I used Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran to knit the samples, which are in a Broken Garter Stripe and a reversible stripe, which makes use of slip stitch techniques to create a vertical stripe.