One ball is one colour and one plan. A bag is possibilities.
Much of what I knit does not start in a yarn shop. I design mostly in mohair, some in wool, but also in surplus yarn from the fashion industry: yarn that was produced but never used up.
Surplus yarn has a quality ordinary yarn does not have. It does not come back. The yarn also often has unique textures and colours that give the design that little extra.
Colours without a dye lot
An ordinary yarn has a colour number and a dye lot. If you run out, you buy more of the same. Surplus yarn does not always have that. Once it is used, it is used, and the colour can rarely be recreated exactly.
With these garments, that changes the way I design. I don’t start with a colour I have decided on. I start with what is in front of me, and let the garment take shape from there.
The prototypes
Every garment in Ready-knitted is knitted by hand by me, in a single copy, while the pattern was being made. When the pattern is finished, the garment is often put up for sale, this one unique piece. The size is the one stated. The colours and the unique textures of the designs in surplus yarn may not come back. If you buy one, there may not be another. Surplus yarn does, however, make it possible to create something completely unique, something no one else has.
Some of my latest designs are for sale now. Among them are Bloom Summer – The Top, a light summer top in mohair, My Sunset Pants, striped trousers in pink, lilac and yellow, and Anastasia – My Bohemian Yellow, a sun-yellow hat in mohair and wool with a wide brim.
When you knit from the pattern
If you knit the garment yourself in surplus yarn, your colour may turn out different from mine. That is not a mistake. It is the point: the garment becomes uniquely yours.
If you change yarn, it is the gauge that decides whether the garment gets the right measurements. Knit a swatch first. How to do it is explained in Knittipedia. All my garments are marked with the gauge, so you can easily choose your favourite yarn.
The same goes for leftover yarn. Knitted from leftovers you have lying around, the garment becomes as one-of-a-kind as the prototype. The patterns made for it are under Knitting with leftover yarn.
From the same industry
I trained at the fashion school Esmod, and I think about the garment before I think about the stitch. The yarn I find comes from that same industry. What was left over there becomes a garment here with me.
Good luck, and feel free to show me your versions of my designs.
Did you know …
The word shoddy appeared in the early 1800s. It was the name of a new material made from old rags and tailors’ clippings. The woollen rags were torn apart in machines with sharp teeth, which came to be called “devils”. Batley and Dewsbury were known as the “shoddy towns”.
Source: Harvard Magazine, extract from “Shoddy” by Hanna Rose Shell
Sources: Harvard Magazine, extract from “Shoddy” by Hanna Rose Shell.
Anne-Turid <3