What I've been up to
Hello everyone!
Hope you are all well and still keeping up your spirit in these long, challenging times.
I've been quiet for a while, busy with various activities. Being my very small business a one-woman business, I found myself very often with my hands in too many pies! Drawing, charting, swatching, knitting, photographing, writing instructions, calculating sizes...
I'm also grateful for this as it makes my lockdown much more bearable. Being my conservation work on hold because of the COVID-19 crisis, I can't imagine how I would have coped with this long time home if I didn't have my knitting design and crafty activities.
I have been busy with a few large projects and today I would like to talk a bit about the poncho I designed for the design competition called 'My place', set up by Kate Davies. All the competition details can be found here or in KDD & Co Ravelry group. I would like to take the opportunity to encourage other knitters to take part in this or similar competitions. It is fun, and it is an occasion for learning many more skills and for having constructive exchanges.
The poncho I designed is called Transumanza, which is the Italian term for transhumance that means 'crossing the land'. It is a traditional migration of sheep and cows from the mountains to the lowlands, and back which happens twice a year.
Transumanza is an ancient tradition vital in Abruzzo, but not exclusive of Abruzzo. People would move with their livestock to higher pastures in spring/summer time and to lower valleys in Autumn time. The paths along where they moved are called tratturi, which lead through valleys, villages and archaeological remains and they represent essential elements of our heritage still now.
Image from www.leviedeitratturi.com
To know a bit more about transumanza you may like this article. There are many more in Italian thou.
The shepherds would wear traditional black/dark capes called tabarro. They wore it during the day, and in the night they used it as a blanket or even a tent. Very famous are Cartier Bresson's photo taken at Scanno, a small town encircled by Majella mountain and that has been immortalised by many photographers. In the Scanno photography campaign Cartier Bresson took also gorgeous images of men wearing tabarro.
Henry Cartier Bresson - Image taken from www.gruppodinstallazione.it
My poncho is designed without any side-opening; I applied a bold rhomboidal geometrical motif to it. It is a motif that comes, with some twists and rotations, from the same sketch from which Gradient mesh originated.
As the motif has a large repeat, I found that a poncho was the perfect garment that would enhance the pattern; on the other hand, the pattern is giving a modern feature to an old traditional cloak.
I chose to knit Transumanza with five shades of Milarrochy Tweed: Hirst, Garth, Ardlui, Tarbet and Lochan, which reflect the colours seen by the shepherds and sheep in springtime migration.
I set up another palette with autumnal colours (Hirst, Horseback, Buckthorn, Asphodel, Cowslip), to reflect the second yearly transumanza.
It is constructed with two identical rectangular panels, each of them are knitted in the round and steeked.
When I was storing the autumnal transumanza swatch, I thought to share with you snaps of my way to archive my samples. At first, I thought to insert them in the journal where I sketch new ideas and designs, but obviously, it couldn't work, as very soon the journal would have been very bulky and messy. So I chose to use an A4 ring binder and punched clear A4 pockets in which keep the swatches. I inserted in each pocket a white paper sheet to have a background against which the sample stands out. The swatches are not anchored in any way; they easily stay in place, so no need for it. For each sample I added details of the type and shades of the yarn used and the size of the needles.
That's all for now! I am going to finish writing instructions for another new design!
Claudia
