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Twist Collective BlogBehind the Scenes - At This Moment Shoot
Jane Heller is one of the photographers who routinely works with Twist Collective. You can see her lovely work in the magazine in Fall's ma belle guitare, and Spring's Better than Basic, just to name a few. You can find much, much more of her work on her website, or even get some for yourself from her etsy shop. Hello everyone! Kate and I thought it would be fun to do a regular post of the "behind the scenes" of each photo shoot. The winter issue is out already but I always find it interesting to see how things are done. This series was shot at a lovely beach that is usually deserted in the month of September but to our surprise there was a bus load of kids swimming in the frigid water! Thankfully the beach was big enough for all of us.
Bellevue
Robin Melanson is a prolific designer. In the past, she has brought us dreamy cabled cardigans, gorgeous jackets, and beautiful accessories; and these are just her contributions to Twist Collective. She shares a slice of life for a busy designer in this post about Bellevue, which can also be found on her blog. My Bellevue sweater pattern is published in Twist Collective Winter 2011 edition*. It’s a hip-length pullover with a deep v-neck, and it is worked in two coordinating textured stitch patterns. It works up very quickly on 5.5 mm needles in Filatura di Crosa “Charly” 100% wool yarn.
*Pony not included with purchase. This sweater was made back in July-August, which gives you an idea of the lead time involved in publishing patterns in magazines. So way back in the nice warm Summer, while I was picnicking by the river, I was dreaming of wintry sweaters and snow and ice. Luckily, it is now winter and I was able to take some winter-inspiration photos over the last few days while out for my usual walks.
I don’t take photos of projects in progress with the plan of using them later in a blog post. There are a few reasons for this. Sometimes I am not the one knitting the sweater, or not even anywhere near the person who is knitting it. Another is that I am not a photography wizard – the reference photos that I take for pattern writing aren’t works of art, they are tools. Publishing knitting patterns tends to be seasonal, and the work comes in great big stacks all at once at certain times of the year, not spread out in a comfortable fashion. So, at Busy Time, my workspace (= apartment) is a disaster area and my free time is non-existent. All waking hours are spent trying to meet stacked deadlines. Hence the dearth of in-progress photos! You see one sweater here, but at the time this was made I had about sixteen on my plate in various stages of their creation. Luckily for you, Twist Collective took lots of photos!
In this one you get a good view of the buttons. I confess I am somewhat of a button
Here is a nice close-up of the cuff. I have to say I cannot wait until I get this one back and can wear it myself. That’s another good thing about Twist Collective – they return the samples to the designer after the trunk shows are over. Given the number of sweaters that I make (in recent years, it’s been about 40 or so per year), I have very little to show for it in my own closet. However, that doesn’t bother me terribly, what I enjoy the most is thinking of new things and creating them (in fact, there is a new thing from me which will appear in the Spring issue of Twist Collective). Should you knit this sweater, I hope that you will enjoy it as much as I will, and that it will keep you warm on days like this:
Styling your Twist handknits
Hi! Carly here- one of many behind the scenes Twist tinkers. Today I'm geeking out over fashion, and hoping you will too. Tell me if this story sounds familiar; you see a sweater in a knitting magazine or book and fall madly in love. You find the perfect yarn (maybe even in your stash) and lovingly swatch (or lovingly don't, you rebel). You work on it furiously, falling more and more in love with your amazing creation. When it's finished, you are elated! Then you find that it is actually kind of difficult to work it into your wardrobe. You love this sweater, but even though you have been wearing clothes for your whole entire life, you cannot figure out how to wear it. This is not your fault, and it is certainly not the sweater's fault. The sweater is awesome, and also innocent. Sometimes it is just hard to picture your wonderful sweater in new situations-- like with your other clothes. In the magazine, we can only really show you one way a garment can be worn, and sometimes fashion shoots are more about fantasy than practicality. Well, the blog is here to help. We don't just want you to make the garments we feature in this magazine. We want you to wear them! Polyvore is a website that allows you to construct outfits from a seemingly endless array of clothing items. It's pretty fun to play with, and also reminds me of Cher's closet from the 90s classic Clueless. You can use it to imagine a million ways to wear any given item, and you can use items silimar to ones you already own. This isn't the first time we've talked about Polyvore on the Twist blog- Marnie gave us a really helpful primer on how to use it, and Julia shared some reader submissions for Timpani. We'll be adding items from Twist to the site, so you can make your own outfits with them too! Taking out their backgrounds is the only tricky part- if you can do that, you can "clip" any Twist item you like straight from the shop! If you want to, you can tweet your outfits and tag then with the hashtag #twiststyle. Here are a few to start you off. I started playing with Oscillate, Amy Herzog's ladylike cardigan design.To me, the buttery yellow just cried out to be paired with something rich and bright. Two takes on that are below...
How would you wear your Oscillate? Inglenook
Laura Kanemori is the designer of these wonderful socks, Inglenook, which feature both a lovely lace motif and non-traditional shaping. Today, Laura shares with us her design process for this, her first pattern with Twist Collective. This entry is cross-posted from her blog, which can be found here.
I love socks. After my first few inevitable scarf and hat projects, socks were the next thing on my "must learn to knit" list. And a 2009 sock club was an extra-special treat from my husband. After working my way through that club, I moved on to Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters. I love this book. After walking through the very basic steps of sock construction through others' patterns, this book lets you leap off into the deep end of your own ideas.
Iin comes Inglenook. Cat teaches that gusset increases can go just about anywhere they want to go, and I know that lace is made up of paired increases and decreases. So I wondered what would happen if you left out the decreases; what you get is a pattern that grows on its own in a very natural manner. A sock that grows without an obvious gusset! Inglenook grew from one of my favorite lace patterns. Each motif reminds me of the licking tongue of a flame. These flamelets grow down your leg from a spiky picot edge and then turn under the heel in a cushy slip-stitch reinforced sole. The socks are wonderfully comfortable in open-back clogs. Toes were something else that came to mind when I was knitting from other people's patterns. Knitted fabric is wonderful in that it stretches and conforms. If you give it a shape reasonably close to what you want it to be, it will accommodate small differences. But you can also shape it exactly as you want. Traditional toes decrease equally on the left and right side. But if you look at your foot, the big toe extends straight out from the body of the foot. I shaped this sock's toe to fit the line of the foot more naturally, and this technique not much different than working a more standard wedge-shaped toe. Then, we have the yarn...
While I tried these out first with yarn I had in my own stash, I had the opportunity to knit with some really lovely yarn, KnitGlobal Pollika sock yarn. This 4-ply yarn is fantastic for socks. It is a wool/nylon blend with a really firm twist. The four plies make the stitches just pop (I'd imagine it would also knit into some really amazing cables and twisted-stitch patterns) and it has a lovely, deep color. It knits up into a smooth fabric that I couldn't wait to put on my own feet (and did quite a few times before giving these babies their final careful wash and block to send them off). It's a real treat to knit with. All in all, Inglenook takes a whole bunch of individual design elements I really like and combines them into a cohesive whole, and in them my toes are just as toasty and warm as they would be if tucked up close to the flames dancing in my fireplace. The pattern for Inglenook is available from the Twist Collective in the Winter 2011 issue. Corcovado
Carol Feller's most recent contribution to Twist Collective is Corcovado, a woven-look coat created with simple slipped stitches. Carol is a talented and prolific designer, having contibuted many wonderful designs to this publication. Keep up with her on her blog, twitter, or read (or knit your way through) her book!
I’ve just had a new pattern Corcovado published in the Winter issue of Twist Collective. It is always such an honor to be part of the wonderful Twist team, their attention to detail and wonderful photography makes it just as exciting for me as any other knitter when the issue goes live! One of the tech editors I work with, Ashley Knowlton, has some beautiful socks, Darlington in this issue also…now just to find some time to knit them (I appear to be running very short of hand knit socks!) This cardigan was quite different for me in many ways. I rarely work in multiple colors or with seamed designs! The construction made sense for this cardigan, the back and front panels are worked in different directions so it was just as easy to sew a seam afterwards as to pick up stitches.
If stranded color work makes you nervous you’ll be happy to hear that this is created using slip stitch color work so you are only ever knitting with one color at a time and the color changes are close enough together that they can be woven up the side to avoid having to weave in a million ends! I love how the brightly contrasting colors created a woven effect for the front of the cardigan. In fact that’s how I came up with the name, Corcovado is a national park in Costa Rica close to a spot that my sister in law used to live.
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