Saturday, August 11, 2012

Twentieth Century Graphic

After months of hard work and anticipation, Twentieth Century Graphic, an ebook (which will also be available as a paper book soon) that I made in collaboration with KnitPicks, is published! The book is a collection of six patterns: two cardigans, one pullover, a shawl, a scarf, and a pair of mitts. Here are the photos from KnitPicks. KnitPicks did an excellent job with the photography—I requested no urban hipsters, no heavy makeup, no fields of flowers, no one wearing wellies or holding a coffee cup or looking wistfully into the distance. The models are beautiful, but they're the sort of beautiful people you see walking down the street. I'm so pleased.


Modular Mitts (based on color studies showing contrast of extension by Johannes Itten);


Saturated Shawl (based on my love of contrast of hue softened by a neutral color and my love of improvised top-down triangle shawls);


Form Follows Function (a pullover in which I challenged myself to create a silhouette and textures by using only knit and purl stitches and working modularly in different directions);


Partition (a cardigan inspired by a contrast in textures in the Bauhaus school building in Dessau);


Project Rothko (a long modular scarf based on the color scheme of one of Rothko's paintings);


And my favorite, Make It Red (the product of a discussion I had with my sister about the saying attributed to graphic designer and teacher Rob Roy Kelly: "If you can't make it good, make it big. If you can't make it big, make it red.").

Obviously, KnitPicks gave me full creative freedom in this project. When I got the opportunity, I dug through my sketches, lists (most of my ideas start as lists on scrap paper), and unpublished knit prototypes and created my six-piece submission in two days. The submission was accepted without changes, and I was allowed to choose all the yarns I wanted in the colors I wanted and produce the pieces exactly as I envisioned them. My only regret is that Gloss Fingering is not available in yellow. Ideally the Saturated Shawl would have included yellow.

Opportunities like this are rare, if nonexistent, with mainstream yarn companies and publications, which is why I'm so grateful to the staff at Knitpicks who believed in me, trusted me (!), and just let me do my thing. And I'm proud that I was able to produce a collection that's completely true to my vision that appears, so far, to be popular.  Right now I'm working on similar collections and project with some of my favorite indie dyer friends, and see this type of collaboration as the future of my work.

To wrap up this lengthy post, here are some photos of me wearing the samples:


Modular Mitts in my studio (with the Make It Red cardigan—awesome long sleeves);


Partition in my studio building;


Form Follows Function outside my apartment;



Make It Red in my studio;



And my sister in the Project Rothko prototype, which had been kicking around for about a year before I found a home for it in this collection.

What's next? CONTAINER SHIPS PATTERN 2! It's finished, and the pattern will be off to the tech editor tomorrow!

Also, since I mentioned my list-based process above, I've decided to share a recent list in each of my blog posts from now on.
8/10
The Dreadnoughts
Dutch women's field hockey uniforms
Adam PW Smith
Cephalopod Yarns—Horseshoe Crab (swatch)

10 comments:

That Clever Clementine said...

I am finally going to have to learn intarsia after all, right? After I've managed to avoid it all these years!

But a giant red stripe down my back? LOVE. IT.

Seriously, this collections rocks. Congrats, congrats, congrats.

gale (she shoots sheep shots) said...

NICE work!
(and love your photo requirements list)
Pretty sure gazing wistfully can only be allowed if it is into a cup of coffee while standing in a field of flowers.

Eline said...

I almost never speak up when I see great designs because I feel like I'm just saying "I really love these new designs. Modular mittens. yay!" And it comes out all flat and meh. When it's really unicorns and vanilla and squee on my part. Which is to say that you're my knitting crush and I find that your aesthetics and use of colour really buzzes my wiring in a good way.

Eline said...

I almost never speak up when I see great designs because I feel like I'm just saying "I really love these new designs. Modular mittens. yay!" And it comes out all flat and meh. When it's really unicorns and vanilla and squee on my part. Which is to say that you're my knitting crush and I find that your aesthetics and use of colour really buzzes my wiring in a good way.

ZanneQ said...

Gorgous and inspiring from the projects themselves to the photography. I look forward to digging in to thes projects!

Salty Miss Jill said...

WHOAH!
AMAZING!!!!!
The best designs yet, Ann!

Love,
SMJ

Anonymous said...

These are awesome! What a cool opportunity. I love all the designs, and it is so fabulous that you had such creative control. Super psyched for you!

Teresa said...

This is fantastic. Such a great collection! I love it.

craftivore said...

Holy cow, there is so much to love here that I hardly know where to start. EVERY single piece is awesome. I noticed those mitts immediately in the Knit Picks catalog but didn't clock that they were you. The shawl, the cardi with the stripe, damn girl!! I adore that quote from RR Kelly. For me it's always about color and every single on of these fits the bill.

PK said...

I just joined front to back to front on the Make It Red Cardigan - after years of trying to get my daughter to pick something that I could make for her, she decided that this was exactly the right pattern (but with a deep purple-blue stripe) - and I just canNOT wait to watch it grow from here on down, and especially can't wait to see the finished sweater on her. She's excited, I'm excited - this is a great pattern! And it's made me so happy that my teenager finally wants me to knit something for her! Thank you!!!