New inspiration

As I wrote in my last post I participated in the knitting class taught by Britt-Marie Christoffersson. Katie asked how it was, and well, it was awesome! It was great inspiration and it made me want to try and think about knitting in a slightly new way. I'd like to experiment more with knitting than I do at the moment. During the class we all tried out different stitch patterns, which Britt-Marie had used in the exhibition. Here's how my swatches turned out. I didn't pay that much attention to the color combo - I wanted to just knit as much as I could while having Britt-Marie around helping out.






















I think that these swatches have helped guiding me in the direction of more experimentation and exploration. Now that would be fun!

Swatches on Parade

Last weekend I went to an exhibition - a knitting exhibition. It was the Swedish knitter Britt-Marie Christoffersson who displayed her experiments in knitting. The main elements are what we would call swatches, all in the same size (40 x 40 cm), and it made up a beautiful coherence even though they were all very different. There were also a few knitted sweaters. With the exhibition she intends to contribute to a development of the craft, as she finds it somehow stagnated. It was so inspiring and I loved the way she used colors and shapes.

More photos on Flickr

She was also teaching a knitting class (which I participated in) during the weekend so I caught her with my camera. She was such a nice and friendly lady.

The colorful Kaffe Fassett

Recently, I watched a program on TV about Kaffe Fassett. I've always disliked most of his designs simply because of the, in my opinion, exagerated use of color. Watching the program, though, gave me a better understanding of what he is up to in his work. It is actually really fascinating the way that you can always recognize his designs. He obviously has a special and individual form of expression, a special way of using colors. It is somehow a relief to see a designer use all these colors both in his knitting designs and in the interior arrangement of his home. There are so many minimalist and colorless designs in fashion - so much gray, white and black. The thing is that people sometimes get fascinated by his attitude to color and sometimes they think he is out of fashion. As he says himself: "I come and go", and he is perfectly OK with that. Personally, I'm still not comfortable with the complete contrast to the minimalist trend, which I think Kaffe Fassett stands for, the mixture and combination of colors in his designs, but watching the program did inspire me and made me take up and reconsider my opinion about the use of color in general.