The simple act of knitting was confusing for me. I knew how to knit, but I was really confused as to how the one continuous yarn/wire/chain was actually turning into a whole piece! It sounds stupid, but even when I was learning about the different weaves and knits in textiles, I could never work out the difference between wales, stitches or courses. Picking up needles and knitting didn’t help at all. So I’ve been in this slump because I couldn’t get past not knowing how the whole thing worked!
Knitting with the chunky yarn compared to the wire was really different. The wire created a flat piece and there was no stretch, which made the wool yarn seem like it was knitted with a different structure.
Above: A chain stitch formation.
The wire removed function of the knit. In the same way I took away the original function of the underwire in the Triumph piece and made it purely aesthetic. I looked into a similar process last semester where I was taking a knit fabric and changing its original purpose.
When we were dissecting the flowers in class I made this grid of flowers that were all connected (below). Ricarda asked me how I could use this as a pattern with knit and I pretty much came up with a blank. At that point I couldn’t see how it could, I was only thinking about the traditional ‘grid’ pattern for knits. As I have thought more about it I can see how the flowers were linking together just like stitches. That took me back to the list of words Winnie gave me, linking, loops, structure, making, constructing, creating…
I began to think about the construction of knitting and thought about each stitch like a brick in a building. The difference between the two is that the yarn is a continuous whereas the bricks are separate. Using the same kind of technique as I did in Triumph, I recreated the shape of each single loop. I had to look really closely at the shapes of the stiches to find out which overlapped where and what shape they created. Again, this was confusing so I started out with a simple crochet stitch (chain stitch) and with wire, which was easier to see what pattern the wire followed. I changed the shape of the loop five times before the links would line up successfully.
Above: Starting with a circle shape for the loop, the fourth experiment didn't link up properly, the fifth experiment which linked.
I seem to have a recurring need for repetition in my work, whether that be the process, or a shape or loop. I think there are a lot of possibilities for ‘building’ garments with this technique. What I couldn’t create with needles I can create with single loops. Specialty knits like tricot, interlock weft knit, rib weft knit, cable knits, pile knits etc. There is a whole range that I could explore as well as crochet and lace stitches which could lead to making my own links/loops.
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