Urban Decay FFAL Week 3 - Rustscapes

Rust is secretly magic - right? Take a metallic object, add some moisture and prolonged exposure to the elements and a fantastic metamorphosis takes place. Nicholas Forrest in writing The Aesthetics of Urban Decay - A Reaction to Rust for artsy.net in 2012 reflects that "a rusty metal surface takes on the characteristics of a living organism which is constantly changing and reacting to its environment. When we see a rusty piece of metal it usually signifies abandonment and disuse but can also represent progress, change and development.  As a sort of “living surface” that is beautifully textural, there is more to rusty metal than its utilitarian function would suggest".

On today's inspirational stroll around our (k)nitty, gritty, grungy city, we're going to play close attention to the rustscapes - the places where rust has worked its transformational magic.

 

For a longer virtual stroll of rustscapes go visit my Pinterest board https://www.pinterest.com.au/ninjaknitter1/derelict/rusted/

Knitting Technique Suggestions

I've always found the random patterning rust forms intriguing to replicate as a fabric. The above rust 'berries' became the basis of a colourwork hat. I started by sketching the dots onto graph paper and then joined them up with curved lines. I made a second chart inspired by a cracked rust surface.

 See my charts below. For the background I used a shifting, stripey background of variegated blues, turquoise and aqua.

The next step is to add the thin curved lines using some embroidery (stem stitch, chain stitch or back stitch I think). 

My freeform piece taking shape

Rust has even made me want to dabble in some crochet - here's my current work in progress. I started with crocheting some tiny circles and then crocheted over the interconnecting yarn and joined up some loops. Then I back-filled sections with knitting or crochet. I'm using doubled lace-weight and sock-weight yarns here. The green is my first piece of handspun yarn - doesn't look too dreadful all knitted up.

Urban Decay FFAL Week 2 - Flaking, peeling paint and wallpaper

Today we draw our freeform inspiration from the impact weathering, neglect and decay have on painted and wall-papered surfaces. Paint cracks, flakes, blisters and peels off surfaces in irregular strips with unexpected frilly edges, exposing unexpected layers of colour documenting eras of changing decorating tastes. Some colours remain as bright as the day they were applied and other mute and fade under the joint influences of sunlight and time.

My Pinterest board, Where Paint goes to Die, curates beauty in aging paint and wallpaper surfaces. 

Wallpaper is like a vertical archeological dig, uncovering eras of habitation and decorative influences. I'm always here for florid scroll work, exuberant florals and dubious colour palettes. Sometimes time peels it all back to the underlying structural framework of lathe, hessian, plaster, horsehair or stone.

Knitting technique suggestions

Marlisle

Marlisle is a method of creating decorative texture and colour shifts in hand-knitted fabric popularised by Anna Maltz (Sweaterspotter) and described in her book Marlisle - a new direction in knitting. By separately knitting the two yarns generally being held together to form a marl base, Marlisle allows patches of stranded colourwork to be scattered throughout a knitted piece without the use of intarsia and avoids long messy floats. Effectively two yarns are used to create three colour effects, the two yarns held together and each worked separately with the other carried behind. The first two swatches below knitted by Anna are what I'd consider to be freeform Marlisle. To me this fairly screams wallpaper.

 

Here's an example where I've used marlisle with a shifting background colour and self striping yarn. I also love how the motifs here pop up from the marled background.

Dimensional Tuck knitting 

Dimensional tuck knitting is a technique developed by Tracy Purtscher where a simple stockinette fabric is manipulated to fold and pucker to create a raised textured surface by knitting tuck stitches at strategic places on the back of the work. I'd highly recommend her book Dimensional Tuck Knitting: An Innovative Technique for Creating Surface Design  if you wan to do a deeper dive in the technique

 

Tracy has video explanations of how to work the tuck stitches she uses to make rippled and folded knitted fabric on her blog - Stringativity.

These experimental swatches, inspired by dimensional tuck knitting, and made on a knitting machine by Rachel Brooks, offer a glimpse into the possibilities of this as a freeform technique.

For me the wrong side of the swatch above is equally interesting, offering insights into its construction.

My freeform piece taking shape 

I began with an existing experimental swatch. I just can't resist an semi-impossible knitting challenge. When I was leafing through my new Japanese Stitch dictionary: 1000 Japanese Knitting & Crochet Stitches by Nihon Vogue, back in January this year, the description of one group of stitches immediately provoked my interest in weird techniques for creating knitted fabric. 'Patterns 650-653. The four stitch patterns in this section are unusual and challenging'. Of course this was effectively enticing me to try this (immediately). The patterns are a combination of overlaid lace and a pseudo marlisle with multiple layers being knitted in parts. It involves juggling four dpns with front and back stitches.But this swatch keeps whispering, 'Wallpaper?" at me.

My progress doesn't look at that freeformish at the moment. I've been making wallpaper like knitted swatches swatches and I'm nearly at the stage where I'm going to start joining and blurring the edges .

Excuse me while I go and play some more.

Urban Decay FFAL - Week 1 - Urban Structure and Framework

 

Welcome to my (k)nitty, gritty, grungy city. 

For the next couple of months we are going to be wandering its streets and alley ways, and poking our noses into the abandoned and derelict places, finding freeform inspiration amongst the Urban Decay.

I'm dedicating this freefrom adventure to two of my best co-conspirators on past adventures in the IFFF (International Free Form Forum)  - the delightful roseknits24-7, who first pushed me down the freeform rabbit hole but was right there with me all the way and Ne11 (Artisan Loops / Uncommon Loops on Instagram), mentor, friend and amazing inspiration who makes me believe we make art, not craft. They've both moved on from Ravelry but I hope their spirit of whimsical delight and mad crochet freeform skills infuse our adventures this time too.

I'm going to suggest something slightly radical as our starting point for this freeform adventure. How about a little planning to start with? Just a little - not too much to inhibit the freeform chaos and creativity - but a little to think about what we could make from combining our eight inspiration prompts.

I have to admit, I have had the luxury of eight months or so to plan this adventure and I knew right from the start that it wanted to be a wearable piece and I eventually decided on a shawl / wrap. (You can see the evolution of my design sketches below).

So ask yourself a few questions before we dive in:

What does this want to be? Something wearable, an art piece, something useful - a cushion, a bag? Do I want to cover something with my freeform? Do I want to just make scrumbles or doodle with yarn?

Or you can just say stuff it and move right onto the freeform thing...

Our inspiration this week is urban structure and framework - thinks bridges, girders, ironwork, scaffolds... Think about both the structure and the spaces in-between.

I'm particularly fond of railway bridges - especially when they are rusty and disused.

So let me talk you through how I used these in my piece. I was looking at the spaces. Can you see all those triangles?

That's a fun shape to play with (especially as a knitter where more linear, angular geometry is a better fit to the fabric structure). What can I do with lots of triangles?

I started with thinking about a template for mittens, constructed from triangles. But that constrained me to smallish pieces and possibly finer yarns than I wanted to work with. And it was just a little too regular to please the freeform muse this time, even if I made them non-matching mittens.

 

But what can I do with lots of different sized and shaped irregular triangles? What if those spaces in the structure were filled in with freeform? That promising thought turned in the shawl sketch above - A structural spine girder with spokes between the freeform triangles.

Might I suggest the patterns of Ursa major KNITS (Link to her Ravelry Designer Store) or you can find her as ursamjorknits on Instagram, as a source of structure inspiration? Her shawls are often made up pieces enclosed in a framework and uses all sort of different shapes

My freeform piece taking shape

I began my structure with the long edge at the top of my shawl. I wanted regular big triangular holes, something I wasn't quite sure how to achieve in knitting, so I turned to a shawl pattern I already had in my extensive collection - #11 Openwork Shawl by Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton from Designer Knitting No.1 2020 which features her Drop-Stitch Openwork technique. My knitted girder is essentially a modified single pattern repeat with an added i-cord rolled edge.

I deliberately held two lace-weight yarns together to achieve the rusty girder effect - a black and grey alpaca and a rusty tonal wool. This will both even up and open up when I block it.

Suggestions for your play

So my challenge for this week is to create your own openwork piece. Embrace the holes and the structure surrounding them. 

 

You could work with mesh, for example. Here's a link to a Ravelry search of crochet mesh shopping and market bags for inspiration Pattern Search - Crochet mesh shopping bag (free)