Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Elephants on Parade!

contributed by Shawn

The NEW issue of Interweave Knits arrived recently and it has the
most amazing and whimsical child's pattern in it! The Baby Elephant Vest by Melanie Rice has elephants on parade! The design is SO simple using yarnovers to pick out the stylized elephant motif that is repeated across the vest. I love the look of this and the idea of creating custom lace charts to make your own motifs. (I love the simple motifs on the Roo Designs sweaters for children, but yarnovers are faster than intarsia color work for me!)

There is a very detailed article that describes how the charts for this
pattern were created. Melanie not only points out how she created this motif for her design but gives great tips about how to start making your own lace motifs. There are tips concerning yarn
choice, information regarding knitter's graph paper - a must for developing your own motifs - and plenty of encouraging words to take you step by step through the process.

Even if you
are not interested in creating your own lace motifs there are plenty of sage words in this article for any knitter. It's always good to remember that a break from your project can often lead to an "aha" moment when previously faced with only
frustration!

While I find the Baby Elephant Vest enchanting, I can't wait to read through
the Swirl Skirt pattern to check out the knit-on-a-bias fabric that claims to prevent knitted skirt sag.
There is also a great pattern for the Nantucket Vest: This is knit in the Tahki Ripple yarn which knits up into the most amazing textural fabric: This is a very popular yarn for summer and we featured it on the Manikin recently in the Myrtle Pullover.

2 comments:

Melissa said...

Ohhh...I really like the swirl skirt! I usually do not like them so that is strange for me. What yarn was used for the sample?

Emily said...

Hi Melissa,

The sample from the magazine is knit using two different yarns in a stripe sequence:

Knit One, Crochet Too "Ty-Dy Dots" 100% cotton

Knit One, Crochet Too " Ty-Dy Wool" 100% wool

These are yarns that we don't carry, however we do have some great yarns that would work as subs:

Scoubi Du, Taiyo, Kudo or Linsey for the cotton, and Liberty Wool, Kureyon or Boboli for the wool!