Free Form

I'm going to do this in pieces because it is very long, but I want to share with you the piece I am working on for my honors project right now. It is about my experiences with free form knitting. Enjoy!
P.S. This is a rough draft, so my apologies for all of the tense changes I suspect are roaming around in here.

The Failure

Monday, 2:30 pm

“I don’t know how I get myself into these things.” That’s what the text message I just sent to my boyfriend said. Things could be worse really; I’m not climbing Mt. Everest or sightseeing in the rain forest. My only challenge is to knit two, though maybe more, free form purses by next Sunday, on top of my 22 credit hour class schedule that is. Then I have to film, cut and edit a video on how to make these purses the following week. The real problem though is that I have never knit free form before and really know very little about it.

Monday, 3:15 pm

I’ve gotten a basic understanding of what free form is and how it works from Margaret Hubert’s “Great Wonderful Free Form Knitting” DVD. Now it’s time to pick out my materials. Luckily I have a stash of yarn and lining material to work with on my limited schedule (and budget). The object is to pick out a variegated (multicolored) yarn with colors that match some of my fuzzy and plain yarns. I end up with 2 fuzzy yarns, 2 plain yarns, and a variegated yarn all in spring colors. The only lining I have to speak of is black. I have my doubts about this; I worry that the black with show through, throwing off my springy color selection. A quick look at the clock, though, reminds me that beauty isn’t the sole goal of this particular project. I will pay for this decision later.

Monday, 4:00 pm

You could call it a caffeine rush or stress overload, but I like to call my level of excitement at this point creativity at its best. All of the above descriptions are true though. I am rushing around my room literally tearing it apart to get this project started. The skeins of yarn hiding my carpet are remnants of the yarn search. Nearby lies a destroyed cardboard box, which I used as material for a sturdy pattern template. I was making real progress.

Today is one of the first nice days of the year, despite the drizzle, and coupled with my color choices, it inspires the use of flowers as the shapes I want to combine to create my first free form purse. This was my second poor choice.

Monday, 4:30 pm

I have casted on my first flower. This is where the fun begins. Finally I’m doing something that I recognize and love. The pink fuzzy yarn runs through my hands as my needles click away. I stop periodically to scrutinize or admire my work and roll the progress of the flower through my thumb and forefinger, smiling to myself at how soft it is. The project is taking shape in my mind; I’m imagining maybe 30 of these little flowers sewn together at random to form the shape of my purse. I should note that I am following a pattern for these flowers; the lack of a pattern is not what defines free form.

Monday, 5:30 pm

I have started to realize the difficulty of the task I’ve taken on. First, the flowers take much longer to make than I expected, and if I need to make 30 for each purse, I’m never going to want to see another knitted flower again. Not to mention all of the classes I will have to miss in order to complete them (let me note that my History of Women in Journalism begins this very minute, but I’m still in my dorm room, knitting away).

Second, I’m laying the flowers I have made out on my lining, and it’s becoming obvious that the lining is going to show through the petals and centers of my flowers. I hate the idea of black taking over this bright, seasonal collage of flowers.

Lastly, it’s going to be very difficult to make the flowers fit the edges of the purse well. They will have to either stick way over the edge or reveal the lining along the edge.

I have a few options at this point. Fortunately, I ignore the devil on my shoulder urging me to throw in the towel. Unfortunately, I also ignore the paused DVD on my TV yearning to be used for help. Instead I take the most conventional approach I can and decide to knit a yellow piece to cover the lining on which I will lay the flowers. It solves my problems with the lining.

Monday, 5:45 pm – Tuesday 12:00 am

Except a quick reprieve for pizza, I have spent the last six hours knitting my yellow base layer. This is where I go wrong: I use only a plain yarn and stockinette stitch the entire thing. I even check the gauge to be sure I have the right number of stitches to make this layer slightly larger than the lining. There’s nothing free form about what I have done here. I pin the lining onto my bare yellow base and crawl into bed feeling defeated.

Tuesday, 5:00 pm

I rushed home after a full morning of classes to take a fresh look at my project. It’s now that I realize how truly plain my base layer is. I do, though, kind of see it as a blank canvas. Yesterday in my flurry of flower-making, I also made a few leaves and a stem. I have decided to make these and a large flower the focus of my purse and throw on a few more randomly-placed flowers to keep it busy, which is the way free form pieces tend to appear.

By the time I weave in all of my ends and sew the flowers on, I realize the true extent of my failure. I had basically made a normal purse and sewn on some appliqué. Yes, there was a variety of yarns in the flowers, but the variety should have also appeared on the base layer. There was basically no variety in stitches. I can’t help but throw it on my dresser, planning to ignore it for awhile. I can’t begin to imagine making a second one.