Sunday, June 17, 2007

THIS THING ABOUT HAND

Soft to the touch, silk slips across the needles for the cowled capelet

When I was deep into sewing and crafting clothing, I used to focus on 'hand'—how a fabric draped and felt to the touch. I'd forage through fabric stores, squishing, feeling, hanging, lifting bolts up from shelves and letting lengths hang so I could get a sense of the textile in motion. Not so much of this goes on in my knitting life. If a ball looks good and feels good, I'll happily drop it into a recipe. Until recently.

Faced with the prospect of making two different garments (a shrug and a cowled capelet) out of a similiar mix of yarns but for two very different purposes, I realized I had to study the hand of each very closely to create the effect. The Florentine shrug, a feast of crispy shantung silks and thick, glossy ribbons, only needs a body to come into its own whereas the cowled capelet required a lighter, more fluid, hand to enable the cowl collar to fall softly around the neck. Too many crispy ribbons is too bulky.

SO, I forced myself to edit, choosing the same Tilli Tomas Burnt Pepper beaded silk and Mikado ribbon for the blacks but choosing a mix of sleek, soft silks for the golden shades. I finally found a use for the two rare skeins of pure silk Italian ribbon in the shade of Cafe Americano (coffee with milk, Italian-style) that I found in Beatrice Gallo's shop in Florence. In with that I mixed a Habu Textiles lash so soft and polite, it's like fairy whispers. You can see the result in the photo just as a rare shaft of sunshine glossed up the golden hues.

The shrug's crispy silks hold up beautifully

Composing plants in pots is much like knitting: add a dab of texture, mix in some color and -voila!