5/11/2007

I've been eyeing the Sanpoku cardigan in Berroco's Yin & Yang booklet for a while. I love that whole booklet. Such simple shapes, such wearable designs! Berroco's been very good at having pattern support for their yarns, both in print and online, for a long time. Now that Norah Gaughan is their design director, though, the designs are superlative. Norah says that she has been experimenting with minimalist shapes and interesting designs. And how! The fronts of the sweater are rectangles, hung on the bias. The back is essentially a trapezoid. The sleeves: rectangles topped with regular raglan decreases. How could I not love such a combination of simplicity and geometry, served up with just a soupcon of edgy?

How pleased I was, then, to see the Origami Cardi in the latest issue of Interweave Knits. In it, Gaughan uses a bumpy berry stitch meant to summon the texture of Japanese crushed silk along the edges. I think it's effective, but I thought the bulky berries would annoy me -- to knit and to wear. So I went with a slightly modified horseshoe lace (Barbara Walker 1). It reminds me of of tulips and umbrellas, particularly in this ever-so-springy yellow.

That Norah Gaughan loves geometry as much as Hugh Moody, my high school math teacher, is clear. Look at her book, Knitting Nature. A book so cool that I make non-knitters look at it to understand why knitting is cool and smart. A book that I can point to when people ask what kind of book I'd love to write.

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