Flat out like a Lizard Drinking

I do love a good Aussie idiom, sadly they are no longer much used as we become increasingly globalised & homogenised.

Flat out like a Lizard Drinking = buzy, very buzy.   Which is what I am this month!  Mostly working on some commissioned hand-knitting for another stage show, I can only show you peeps...

The Aqua plain & striped is a twinset - very vintage, very lady-like.  The costume designer chose the design from a vintage pattern, she chose the yummy colours too.
The yarn is 5ply (Sports Weight) which does give a lovely authentically vintage look (it drapes like thicker yarn never will)  BUT thinner yarn = more stitches to be knitted and I've had to be almost machine-like in my hand-knitting to get it done - has taken 10days for the cardigan.

This soft brown with all the texture is, thankfully, in thicker yarn- 8ply or DK.  This is based on another vintage pattern (one in my own collection:-)  )  but lots & lots of adaptation for this as the original pattern was for sock-weight yarn.  I've adapted the stitch as well, as knitting with twice the thickness of yarn makes a stitch pattern so much larger - it would not have looked vintage at all. 

Even with the highly textured stitch which is worked as a cable, this garment seems to be flying along after the slow progress of the thin-yarn cardigan!

In amongst all of that - I'm also making some more Knitted Cashmere TopHat coverings.  I made the first one last year and posted about it here  -  now they want 2 more Top Hats.  The first a rush-job and purple - not a bright psychedelic 1970s purple but a softer, rustic, crushed berries colour.  Of course I was nearly out of Cashmere fibre and had to order some in (from Belisa) then I spun it nice and chunky / rustic with about 40% sheep wool.
The cashmere is the brown - that is its natural colour and it is really soft, like spinning with cloud!   

Then I dyed it purple and knitted all the shaped pieces - the knitting is probably the fastest part of the whole process! 

Here they are after blocking.



I love the texture.

And now for something non-knitty.

Remember this?

Well Violetta was correct and it was a tutu ...  though along the way, part of this costume became a useful prop for this photo of Lillian ...

Here is the complete finished tutu costume ... Odette, the white swan in Swan Lake, for Blythe.

I sold this costume on my new Etsy shop for BlytheStar  within 3hours of listing it - hope the new owner loves it all as much as Violetta did! 
It was quite an involved process to make it all - first the tutu skirt seen in that previous post, then the satin bodice with its beading ...


And the lacing up the back - I had wanted to use metal eyelets but couldn't get any tiny enough that actually function without getting really rough on the inside - don't want to scratch Dolly's back.  Though, to be honest something worse than scratches has happened to the doll in these pics !!


There I've been drawing the 'wing' design for the top layer of the tutu.  

The 'wings' are lightly quilted satin and heavily beaded with lovely silver-foiled glass seed beads.  And yes, Lillian borrowed them for her Angel photo.


I used the same 'wing' idea for the head-dress - always a very important part of a classic ballerina Swan costume.

Audrey helped me to get the shapes correct.











The head-dress finished, it sits on a Blythe head without needing pins or things.






Here is a back view of the tutu ...

















And one last 'hero' shot.   I'll have to make more complete costumes like this for my BlytheStar Etsy shop ...

Musing about Distressed Knitting: part 2

As promised - a second rave about Distressed Knitting, (see this post for the 1st part) this time focusing on the garments I've been knitting of late. Let's start with the largest one ...
A cardigan / jacket for Colline in Opera Australia's new production of La Boheme. Colline is a philosopher and poor, he is also a Bass and David Parkin is to sing the role - David is very tall and strongly built so this is a large garment. Sorry, I was too lazy to set up Bruce, my male mannequin, so here the cardi is shown on Daphne with lots of shoulder padding - the cardi looks better on David. Well better in all its tatty and badly knitted glory!

Julie Lynch, the designer, gave me a reference photo from the 1930's showing a jacket with pleats (a bit like a Norfolk Jacket) - the sleeves were set-in quite strangely and the hem was badly stretched. She asked for pockets and we decided to put those pleats down the back as well. She needed the cardi to look old & worn out and also to look like it had been badly knitted. Julie had chosen 2 (rather ugly) mustard coloured yarns and wanted 1 row stripes of each (I threw in the occasional 2 row stripe for added Ooops).

For me the challenge is to produce a garment that is tatty looking & "badly knitted" but that still functions as a garment. Holes and ladders need to be stable and they need to be large so that the folks in the back rows can see them - they also need to be in logical places ... places where holes happen in much worn garments. I thought that a philosopher would do a lot of reading, writing and musing & I checked with David Parkin, he is right-handed, so I made a hole at the elbow in the left sleeve and made the right wrist very tatty



David & Julie liked the pockets and we decided to make them quite stretched


As for Badly Knitted ... well I've plenty of experience with knitting mistakes and where those are likely to happen ! Above you can see mis-matched fronts at the hem and here is a close-up showing mis-matched spacing between buttons & button-holes (totally contrived with short-rows). Holes & ladders down the front and you can see a pleat (they are giant Icords stitched down later).


This garment was quite loosely knitted - on larger than optimum needles - and so keeping the fabric stable was a problem.

Next garments in size - 2 cardigans for child performers. Little 'street urchins' in La Boheme. Once again the brief was for worn out and badly knitted garments. This is for a boy, and wasn't to be too distressed (perhaps it is taking the medication!)
Don't you love the yarns Julie chose - kinda school uniform. The reference photo was a 1930's child's garment with dropped shoulders but tight about the armhole.

Most of the holes are on the fronts, elbows, wrists.


Bad knitting includes mis-matched stripes & buttoning, stitching giving way at the armholes ... but so that the garment still functions the neck & shoulder areas are very good knitting :-)

The 2nd child's cardi was to be in a far worse condition ... this poor thing needs to be hospitalised !

Here is the reference ... again those 1930's tight armholes, Julie asked for a similar collar (it was a very strange shape1) and those buttons & loops.


I had to make both these cardigans a little-bit-too-tight but we weren't able to have a fitting so I'm relying on the stretchiness of hand knitting and hoping that they are tight but not too tight! Hopefully the buttons & loops will pull as in the photo. Lots of bad knitting on display here, note the pulled-too-tight seam stitching!


Details such as holes & ladders do get hidden with a tweed yarn - and most of my "distressing" was a little lost in the fingerless gloves, for MiMi and knitted in a tweed sock yarn.

They are a tiny canvas for distressing and I guess that only the tattyness on the edges will be visible.

The last of the distressed garments for La Boheme was a beanie - also for Colline. Julie asked for Vertical Stripes so I used a technique many may recognise from old tea-cosy patterns :-)

This had to be quite large (larger than Mary - my old papier mache head) as David Parkin will be wearing a wig for at least part of the time (and that wig is marvelous, so totally 'real' - the Opera Company's wig-makers are really wonderful).


Now for the last Distressed Knitting - in that previous post I mentioned the shawl I knitted last year for he Bird Lady in Mary Poppins ... well, the designer liked that one so much that she asked for another :-)

The 1st was knitted in beige 3ply yarn and dyed grey later - this time they gave me 4 different beigey grey and grey yarns, 2 of them mohair. So I've knitted all the dirty splodges into the shawl along with the ladderings & holes.
The Bird Lady in this production is very tatty indeed - a street person and as she is very friendly with the birds they have left their little messages all over her :-/ well that's the 'look'. I've been laughing that most knitters use colour-work techniques for pretty flowers, hearts, snowflakes ... I've been using those techniques to make 'Bird Poo'.
The mohair yarns make the shawl look rather elegant in a disgusting way but they knitted up very differently to the other 2 wool yarns - the mohair tends to stretch and it didn't roll between the ladderings despite my using the "Clapotis" technique (knit through back of loop before & after stitch/es to be dropped later) .... so the shawl developed a very lop-sided shape. Guess it all adds to the effect!

Musing about Distressed Knitting: part 1

First there was a fad for 'distressed' furniture - and when we renovated our kitchen the cabinet-maker was convinced that I would want cupboards made of new timber specially bashed about to make it look old & recycled (ridiculous - I told him that I did NOT want distressed cupboards or a stove on the verge of a mental breakdown and if anything was going to be distressed in my kitchen it would be me !) ... Then we had 'distressed' jeans and I sincerely hope that fad is on the decline. But best not get me started on that soap-box because really, I wanted to talk about Distressed Knitting.
Because, I've been doing a lot of it lately - costume for stage productions. Many costumes get 'broken down' - when a character is poor, or is in the middle of a big adventure / war / is fleeing from a monster ... it would be rather strange if they looked like a fashion plate in beautiful, brand new clothes. When a costume is sewn specifically for a production it is made beautifully and then handed to the 'art finisher' who, depending on the look desired, sprays or paints dye into it (for sweat, blood, dirt ...) chops into it with scissors & things, scruffs if up with graters, wire brushes etc etc ... all of which sometimes causes the costume makers to join the costumes in being distressed!
Some Very Distressed & emotionally disturbed sewing.

With hand-knitting some dyeing processes are OK but you cannot chop into knitting or attack it with wire brushes - unless you go to a lot of trouble stitching around the area first ... which is done, mostly with shop-bought machine knitted garments, but it is not really satisfactory and is rather obvious - at least to all the knitters in the audience :-)

So, when a costume designer wants hand-knitting to look old and tatty it is done as the item is knitted. Sounds easy enough but you need the garments to be stable - those holes & ladders should be the same for the 101st performance as they were on opening night - and the tattyness should be visible to people sitting up the back.

The first piece of Distressed Knitting I made was a shawl for the Bird Lady in Mary Poppins the musical - soon to open in Sydney (I blogged about the shawl here) and here is Debra Byrne wearing it.

The designer wanted that shawl to resemble one made from machine knit fabric that had been extremely laddered.

The more recent Distressed Knits are all for Opera Australia's new production of La Boheme - designs by the wonderful Julie Lynch (BTW if you go to "folio" there you'll see, amongst all those fabulous costumes, some other knittings that I've made for the stage - in 'Little Women' including the red & black bonnet :-) and the black & silver cardigan in 'Mary Stuart') The major characters in La Bo are impoverished artists and students and this new production is set in 1930's Berlin.

As this post is getting quite lengthy I'll just talk about the scarves and keep the other knittings for part 2. I've knitted 7 scarves, all bar one (for the LandLord so he has money!) have varying degrees of Distress. These are not very distressed - merely sobbing gently in the corner -
a wide scarf - more about the stripes and slipped stitch rib pattern than the tattyness. Those colours make me think of chocolate cake with cream :->
This one is long - and mostly about the contrast 'splodges' which make it look dirty & stained.

These 2 are on medication ... (but aren't the colours fabulous - the yarns were chosen by Julie Lynch. The red is for an artist, the other is for the Plum Seller - perfect colours!)


And these are for street urchins and they are extremely distressed, poor things.


Well, that last one didn't get many holes etc - the mottled thick&thin yarn looked like it was in a bad way all by itself and my added tattyness was mostly wasted.

Now a scarf is merely an accessory - hard for me (as the knitter of them) to keep that perspective but the performers will be wearing more than just the scarves (I hope!) However, as all scarf wearers know, a scarf can say a lot and of course I wanted to do the best job possible and deliver what Julie Lynch required ... SO quite a lot of thought & planning went into those apparently simple bits of knitting:

• With the tight time-scale and the need for 'squishyness' I decided to use larger-than-normal needles for loose and (relatively) quick knits
• The yarns were chosen by Julie Lynch and were mostly quite chunky but some were much thinner - in most cases I used the thin ones held double
• All except the "choc cake & cream" scarf are completely reversible - various forms of ribbing and 'blanket' or 'basket' stitch. With the choc&cream scarf Julie needed me to reproduce the stripe pattern from a photo of a vintage scarf
• Most of these scarves have stripes - the cutting and joining of new yarn is usually a problem as all the ends have to be secured and sewn in invisibly. With these distressed knits the ends are all secured but the sewing is not always invisible, however, most are. If I'd left all the tails sticking out these scarves would've looked like hairy caterpillars
• The splodged scarf was the most difficult. The white yarn is thick soft alpaca, the beige yarn is an extreme thick&thin, the dark yarn is thinner and tightly spun - how to achieve the look Julie needed with the right percentages of those yarns and not have an unmanageable amount of joining&ends?

And lastly there is the visibility factor. A scarf is worn wound about the neck so it is pointless putting tattyness in the mid-section where it won't be seen - keep the work near the ends where the scarf might spread out across (hopefully) something in a contrast colour :-) Make the tattyness a bit 'larger-than-life' so the folks in rows X, Y & Z will see it. And make it real - a very contrived and theatrical "real" but let's think about it:

• A ladder often starts from a hole and doesn't always go all the way to the edge
• Holes are seldom perfectly symmetrical
• Knitting often gets caught on things which results in a pulled thread
• If knitting gets unravelled there will be loose yarn
• If a scarf were caught in a door or a machine (being very imaginative here!) and it was torn on the fringed end ... well the fringe would be torn and missing there too.

Well, one can get extremely philosophical on the subject. Indeed, philosophising about strange things is a known side-effect of spending many hours hand-knitting. But in summary - there is more to Distressed Knitting than just dropping a few stitches. More in Part 2 folks :-)

Is there a Dr Zhivago in the house?

I don't like to boast about the commissioned knitting I do for theatrical productions until they've 'hit the stage' but Dr Zhivago's opening night was over a week now so I guess it's ok to show-off now :-) Especially as I'm actually listed in the back of the programme - in the credits - as 'Knitter' hilarious!

The Costume Design by Tess Negroponte got very good reviews - there are some really pretty evening gowns in the 1st act :-) all my knitting was for the 2nd act, after the revolution. First I knitted a coat for 'Lara' ... unfortunately they didn't use this coat but I love the 19teens styling - fitted, long-line with shaped hem-line.




Tess wanted a Tweed yarn and we couldn't find one in the right colour so we bought (from Bendigo Woollen Mills) some blue 8 ply (DK in the US) and white lace weight, I dyed the white a light grey and then plyed the yarns together on my spinning wheel. Tess also wanted a striped look with some "lobster claw" cables - I chose to use a rib with a slipped stitch for the other stripes (that slipped stitch made the 'stripes' stand out a bit better). Here is some detail Moss / Seed Stitch borders, shaping increases / decreases placed between the 'stripes' ....

and Short Rows to shape the hem ...


When I knit for the stage I can't use an existing pattern (is there a pattern for a coat like this ??) I'm usually given a toile or paper pattern which has been fitted to the performer (the wonderful costume maker Tony Phillips did the toiles for the knits; he and his company made most of the women's costumes for Dr Zhivago). Careful swatching, gauge measurements and lots of maths follow ...



Next I made a beret for 'Tonia' - also not used. Although I made it quite large, I guess it wasn't big enough to go over all Tonia's hair & wig. This was based on an existing pattern - Woolly Wormhead's 'Meret' . Modeled by Linda the Plaster Person who has no eyes!
Next off the needles was an old-fashioned vest for 'Alex' (Dr Z's father-in-law, played quite marvelously by Peter Cousins) And this vest gets some really good 'stage-time' :-) Front with a cable stitch texture and 3 working pockets - again Moss Stitch borders this time with crochet contrast on the edges - all Bendigo Woollen Mills yarns.


The back is plain stocking stitch. I'm showing the knits with pins - they did get buttons but someone else put them on.



Then, right at the last minute they asked me to knit a shawl ... 1.5m square in less than a week EEP!
The reference was a photo of a classic baby shawl with stocking stitch centre and wide lace border with geometric, diamond pattern. There was no way I could hand-knit it in the classic lace-weight yarn given the time frame - I used 8ply but was still knitting 14hrs a day ... and we had a heat-wave (talcum powder helped to stop the sticky factor!)

I did it - knitted in 4.5 days with lace border and edging that I charted out myself For the border I borrowed elements from the Faux Russian Stole in “A Gathering of Lace” the Faux Russian seemed appropriate :-) and the edging was loosely based on the edging in Wendy Engstrom’s ”Orenburg Style Shawl” {a Ravelry link} The Edging seemed to take forever and used up so much yarn. Edgings are deceptive - they look small but they go on and on and on ...

As soon as it was knitted it went into the dye pot - for a slightly darker grey (though it still looks quite light in the photos). Luckily the drying after the dying could be combined with blocking - though when I delivered the shawl the next day it was still slightly damp!


The shawl is used but is not on stage for long - 'Lara' wears it when she & the good Doctor come downstairs during the song Love Finds You - I think that was the song. I saw a Preview and when she ran back upstairs the lace flounced quite nicely - It's all about the flounce but a good flounce counts for a lot in the heart of a costume maker :-)

And here is another photo - that lace did seem to go on for ever.