Designing... knitting...pattern...writing...

The cooperation with Barkafonal and my knitting"carreer" arrived to a new point...

I have knitted before without using a pattern, or modifying it until it was not recognizable, or looking at a picture, knitting something and the result somehow looked pretty much like the picture, even though I could not read the pattern (my German is nonexistent)...

Now, for Barkafonal I had to design something brand new I , from total scratch, and such a way that could be written down and shown how to do it for others (who would be able to understand it...)

It gave me a biggertask, because I had to use one particular yarn, a handdyed one from a thicker variety. As we all know it is not easy to work with handdyed yarns, especially with the ones that have strong contrast between the colors, because it can "break up" the pattern. So I had to think up something that would not clash with the colors, but they would enhance each other. After several swatch I came to the conclusion that my original idea, the 1x1 cables (and their variation) would indeed work well.

There were also othe requirements such as no more than two hanks for all three pieces, not too experienced knitters should be able to do them but it shouldn't be to boring for the more experienced ones, all three pieces should be useable separatly and knitted from less than one hank...

So the fall set of neckwarmer, fingerless gloves and beret was knitted and written up very detailed way with lots of pictures. Doing a beret was the obvious choice as it is the only type of hat that suits me (or so I think). I love fingerless gloves, as they stilll warm my hands, but still enable me to handle money, or keys, or my public transport pass withouth taking them off. As for the neckwarmer I long wanted to do something romantic, tudor style, ruffled something, but kept putting it off... there is no better opportunity, right?

So, here they are. The detailed instructions with ton of pictures are on the Barkafonal's page, at the moment only in Hungarian though. I hope I will have enough time soon to do the translations for English...