According to Vogue this summer is all about colour blocks, breton stripes and pale frilly things. I am quite looking forward to sewing some colour block shirts. I don't tend to wear stripes so had originally dissmissed these out of hand, but then I thought of knitting a stripped beach shawl. I imagine it in broad blue and white stripes in mercarised cotton, the blue stripes are plain but the white stripes could be lacy. Then I thought about knitting it as a hat...!
I love sunhats and recently found a pattern for a knitted sunhat called Windandsea from Kristi Porter's Knitting in the Sun. I've resized the pattern from double knit to 4 ply and have dug out a ball of Twilley's flaxen. The hat uses a decrease at eight points in the circumference every other row and I was worried that I've get bored so I've also added in a lily of the valley motif from Nancy Bush's Knitted Lace of Estonia: Techniques and Traditions. So far it looks a little like this:
I'm also imagining various incarnations of stripey sunhats, occasionally straying towards handbags and wishing I knew a bit more about how to design lace knitting. So I'm off to do some more research and more sketching, and probably a bit of swatching as well.
TTFN
