Judith Schaechter was the keynote speaker at last year’s BE Con event. She’s a fine artist that works in stained glass. Not your usual medium for an artist but that’s what she does and she gave the best lecture on the divide between art and craft. Glass artists deal with this quite a bit. Fortunately more fine art made of glass is being produced and there’s an understanding that there can be a big difference between fine and functional art. Judith has received much recognition as a fine artist, having received Pew and Guggenheim fellowships. This story is about her project for Eastern State Penitentiary’s stained glass windows. Check it out…and her web site. She’s a very cool lady and extremely talented too!
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Bring Some Texture to Your Sweater Knitting
I generally think of adding color as a way to add interest to a sweater. You can easily throw in stripes or a bit of Fair Isle patterning, even on a sweater that’s meant to be plain, to make it a little more fun.
But there’s also something to be said for working a sweater in a solid color and using textured stitch patterns to make a project more interesting.
Tressa Weidenaa’s Bluewater Sweater began as wrap design, and then a cowl she designed for a class. The stitches looked to her like they would also be good on a sweater yoke, so the Bluewater Sweater was born, too.
The textured stitches are meant to look like ripples on water, inspired by a lake her family visited when she was young. It’s all knits and purls and a single color, which would make it a nice first sweater or one when you’re still early in your knitting journey.
The sweater is worked from the top down in DK weight or light worsted yarn and has a circular yoke. The pattern is charted, but just knits and purls worked in the round makes for pretty easy chart reading. There are 11 sizes to chose from, with a finished garment circumference ranging from 40.5 to 65.75 inches, or 103 to 168 cm. You can choose the amount of ease you would like, but it’s meant to have 4 to 6 inches, or 10 to 15 cm of positive ease.
You can buy this pattern on Ravelry, and if you’re interested in how the stitch pattern looks in other designs, also check out the Bluewater Cowl and Shawl. It’s really interesting to see how to same basic knit and purl patterns can be put to such different uses, or even just how they look different when stitched in different colors. Isn’t knitting fun?
[Photo: Tressa Weidenaar]