JOELLE HOVERSON is the owner of Purl (www.purlsoho.com), a popular knitting supply store in New York City’s trendy SoHo neighborhood. Before opening Purl in 2002, she worked as a senior style editor for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. As a freelance stylist she has worked for a variety of clients, including Crate & Barrel, Eddie Bauer, and O, The Oprah Magazine, Gourmet, and Travel & Leisure magazines. She holds a master of fine arts degree from Yale University.
ANNA WILLIAMS is a freelance photographer based in New York City. Her work appears frequently in Martha Stewart Living, O, The Oprah Magazine, Food & Wine, Gourmet, Real Simple, In Style, Elle Décor, Condé Nast Traveler, and other national publications.
by Joelle Hoverson
Photographs by Anna Williams
Today’s knitters are chic, smart—and busy. Although they love to knit and enjoy making gifts for family and friends, they’re constantly faced with the challenge of finding enough time to actually finish what they’ve started. Last–Minute Knitted Gifts solves this problem. JOELLE HOVERSON, owner of Purl, a favorite knitting supply store in downtown Manhattan, has designed more than thirty easyto– follow patterns, most of which can be made in less than ten hours—some in as little as two!
Known for her keen sense of color, Hoverson, a fine artist and professional stylist, has put together a fun, fresh collection that includes classics like baby booties and bonnets, sweaters, and scarves, plus imaginative options like a cashmere tea cozy, a felted yoga mat bag, floor cushions, and a poncho—surely something for everyone on the gift list. And to make each present extra–special, Hoverson offers simple tips on working with color and how to incorporate knitting—and yarn embellishments like ribbons, cords, and tassels—into the gift wrap.
Shown in elegant photographs by world–class photographer ANNA WILLIAMS, the projects in Last–Minute Knitted Gifts are sure to appeal to knitters of all levels of experience as well as the people for whom they want to show their love, affection, or appreciation—for there are few more touching ways to show someone you care than to knit a gift for them by hand!
Published in 2004 by
Stewart, Tabori & Chang
An imprint of ABRAMS
Text copyright © 2004 Joelle Hoverson
Photographs copyright © 2004 Anna Williams
Illustrations copyright © 2004 woolypear
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoverson, Joelle. Last-minute knitted gifts / Joelle Hoverson;
photographs by Anna Williams—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58479-367-0 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-58479-367-8 (hardcover)
1. Knitting—Patterns. 2. Gifts. I. Williams, Anna. II. Title.
TT825.H677 2004
746.43′2043—dc22
2004006111
Editor: Melanie Falick
Designer: Asya Palatova
Production Director: Kim Tyner
The text of this book was composed in Nobel and Avenir
115 West 18th Street
New York, NY 10011
www.abramsbooks.com
To my customers,
who have made Purl more
special to me than
I ever thought possible.
Introduction
Exploring Color
Knitting Basics
Less-than-Two-Hour Gifts
Two-to-Four-Hour Gifts
Four-to-Six-Hour Gifts
Six-to-Eight-Hour Gifts
More-than-Eight-Hour Gifts
Wrapping Handknit Gifts
Special Techniques
Recommended Reading
Sources for Supplies
Index
Acknowledgments
When an editor from Stewart, Tabori & Chang called me one day at Purl, my knitting shop in New York City, and asked if I wanted to write a book, I was surprised and delighted. While I had often dreamed about authoring a book, I’m sure I wouldn’t have started one just then if I hadn’t been nudged along by this offer. The editor’s idea was a book of knitted gifts that could be completed in about ten hours or less. Although I agreed to work on a proposal, I have to admit that at first I was suspicious of the concept. I worried that quick projects would limit my creativity, that they weren’t quite “real.” I’d always felt that knitting should be about the process, not about cranking out finished pieces in a short time.
But as it turned out, this book has been a revelation for me. Creating these simple patterns that knit quickly but are also special gifts has been inspiring, challenging, and fun. And I know now that if my theme hadn’t been quick projects, I never would have finished them by my deadline. As it was, I was still putting the finishing touches on some of them in the wee hours of the morning just before the start of photography.
Just like knitting for a photo shoot, knitting gifts often begins with beautiful visions and ends in a mad dash. Perhaps supplies were purchased months in advance with very good intentions, and yet somehow time has escaped too quickly and the gift must be finished over a weekend, or even in one evening. To minimize the madness, the projects in this book are broken up into chapters based upon how long they take to knit: Less than Two Hours, Two to Four Hours, Four to Six Hours, Six to Eight Hours, and More than Eight Hours. There’s also a chapter showing mostly quick but unique and distinctive ways to wrap handknitted gifts. The wrapping is usually the first thing a gift recipient sees so I think it should be special—but definitely not hard or time-consuming to create.
All of the projects in this book were tested and timed by experienced knitters. And, oftentimes, they were—true to this book’s theme—knitted at the last minute, thus as quickly as possible. If you are a beginning knitter or not wanting to knit at a particularly fast pace, then you might want to leave yourself more time as insurance. Some patterns include a range of sizing; in most cases, the sample was knitted in the smallest size. Remember, the larger the size, the more time it will take to knit. If you are looking for the quickest projects possible, go straight to the Less-Than-Two-Hour chapter.
While the core of this book is, of course, the projects, the other chapters are also important to me. They are based on my experiences with my customers at Purl. Often, they come in and are dazzled by the colors of yarn lining nearly every inch of wall space but they are fearful of trying something new. They worry that they are not “good with color” or that the person they are knitting for might not like the color they choose. To me, working with color is one of the great joys in life, and I wrote the Exploring Color chapter in hopes of giving people the inspiration and confidence to experiment with it on their own. Similarly, I find that many of my customers—at least when they’re new to the shop—are not confident in their knitting knowledge. For that reason, I wrote Knitting Basics, which is not meant to be a comprehensive reference but rather a compilation of answers to questions that I hear every day at Purl. On the Recommended Reading list on page 138 are several reliable, comprehensive technical reference titles.
There are few more touching ways to show someone you care than to knit something for them by hand. Somehow the stitches we create are able to convey sentiments for which words don’t always suffice. I hope the patterns in this book will help you to express yourself to those who are dear to you. At its heart, this is not simply a book of patterns, it is my gift to you. My wish is that it will give you the inspiration and confidence to explore and create unique projects for your loved ones on your own.
Customers at Purl are usually mesmerized when they walk into the shop for the first time and see the vibrant colors of yarn that line nearly every inch of wall space. Particularly in urban environments like New York City, the experience of being surrounded by a wide spectrum of rich and subtle color can be remarkable and joyful. And yet I find even customers who love color are often wary of working with it. Many seem to feel overwhelmed when faced with a lot of choices. Some believe there is a right and wrong way to mix and combine colors—and they’re not confident in their abilities. When choosing yarn for gifts, they face the added challenge of selecting colors they like to work with and with which the gift recipient will be pleased.
Personally, I believe color is a gift given to all of us by nature and is something we can take great pleasure in sharing with others. Part of the reason I opened Purl—and decided to write this book—was to share my passion for color and to inspire people to explore it in ways that are new to them.
When selecting color for a project, people often approach their decision-making by looking for colors that “match” or “go together.” I often find it more helpful to look at colors from the perspective of how they are different. To heighten my awareness of how colors differ, I think about the concepts of color relativity, complementary color, related color, chroma, and value.
Understanding Color Relativity
Early in our childhoods most of us are taught how to identify the primary colors, which are red, yellow, and blue. If we’re lucky, we are also taught that by mixing two of these primary colors together, we’ll get the secondary colors, specifically, red + yellow = orange, yellow + blue = green, and blue + red = violet. However, one thing many of us are surprised to discover is that there really isn’t such a thing as a “pure” or “true” color. To understand this concept, ask a group of ten knitters to find yarn that is “true primary red” and compare the results. Most likely you’ll be looking at ten different shades of red. If you look at these ten reds together you will start seeing how they differ from each other. Some will look more violet, some more orange. Some will be quite vibrant, others will appear to be dull. This is because our experience of individual colors changes according to their context. This changing perception of individual colors is called the relativity of color. Relativity can make color seem mysterious, unpredictable, and sometimes intimidating, but it also plays a big role in what ultimately makes working with color so rewarding.
Using the Color Wheel to Understand Complementary and Related Colors
The color wheel is a helpful tool in fostering our understanding of color. On a basic wheel, red, yellow, and blue make up the primary colors from which every other color is made. The secondary colors are made of mixtures of the primaries, as explained earlier. Starting with yellow at 12 o’clock, blue at 4 o’clock, and red at 8 o’clock, the secondary colors would fall like this: green would be at 2 o’clock, violet at 6 o’clock, and orange at 10 o’clock.
I have put together a color wheel of yarn samples that follows this arrangement (see right), but you can see that in many places the samples don’t necessarily flow perfectly from one color to the next. This is because in practice both pigments (the minerals and plants that actually constitute dyes) and fibers have irregularities and impurities in them that give us colors that are more complex than simple red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet, and these complex colors are often more beautiful as well. Notice that the yellows are directly across from the violets. Yellow and violet are complementary colors. The same goes for blue and orange as well as red and green. The colors between the primary and secondary colors (known as the tertiary colors) are also directly across from their complements. Colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel are described as complementary colors because the visual relationship between them is very dynamic.
Oftentimes complementary colors can seem to vibrate when placed next to one another. If you look at paintings by Claude Monet you will find that he often used combinations of complementary colors in his work, which is one of the reasons why his paintings are so striking. The Child’s Rainbow Scarf (see above) is a good example of knitting with complementary colors to create a very dynamic relationship. Part of what makes this scarf fun is that the colors of the yarn are bright and hot, but what really makes this project zing is that these vibrant colors are just about true complements of one another, so that each stripe visually vibrates against the next.
Working with colors that neighbor each other on the color wheel can produce more subtle results. Between yellow and orange you can find an infinite number of colors from yellow-orange to orange-yellow. These are related colors, or colors of the same family. Working with many colors of the same family in one project is a great way to add depth to the overall color of your project; your mind’s eye seeks out the difference between the colors and mixes them together, creating a visually rich experience. This way of working with color is what inspired me to create the Purl Scarf. In the Venetian red version of this scarf (see below), the base color is a pink tone, and it is blended together with a vibrant orange laceweight mohair, as well as a brick red worsted-weight mohair. Together, the effect of these three colors is both rich and quiet. In the celadon version of the Purl Scarf (see page 80), the colors are more closely related, and the effect is more subtle. Adding a strand or two of laceweight mohair not only makes this project softer in texture, it also adds softness to colors that are flat or monochromatic (monochromatic means one-colored, and fibers that are monochromatic are those that are not heathered, and those whose color does not vary as hand-dyed yarns do). The Super-Easy Leg Warmers (see right) also benefit from this technique. The base yarn is a monochromatic medium blue, but it is knit with a strand of very fine mohair in a slightly richer blue. The ribbing in this pattern adds its own depth to the overall color of the piece, but with the mohair knit in, the color takes on a very special quality. The final color almost seems to glow as the lighter color shines through the slightly richer mohair. If I had added a strand of laceweight mohair in a much darker blue or in a complementary color, the result would not have been as luminous, but would have, instead, looked more like an allover heathered color (which of course is an effect with its own beauty).
Practically speaking, when looking at colors to blend together, it is helpful to twist the separate strands together rather than just holding two skeins next to each other. You’ll often be surprised by the results. Usually I find that customers end up selecting more vibrant colors when they explore the relationship between the colors by twisting strands together.
Understanding Chroma
Another color concept at work in the Venetian red version of the Purl Scarf is the contrast of chroma. To understand chroma, think of a ripe Meyer lemon, then think of freshly squeezed lemonade. The bright and vivid yellow of the lemon is much more vibrant than the lemonade. The difference between these colors is their chroma. The lemon is high in chroma; the lemonade is low in chroma. Conceptually, a highly chromatic color is one that hasn’t been mixed together with its complement. In the Venetian red Purl Scarf, the brick red mohair is much lower in chroma than the bright orange laceweight mohair, or even the slightly earthy pink of the handspun wool. The more vibrant colors of the pink yarn and orange laceweight yarn are luminous underneath the less chromatic brick red mohair. A color that is low in chroma is one that is made when its opposite color is mixed in, which slightly “grays” or breaks the color.
All grays are made up of primary colors combined with relatively equal amounts of their complements. For example, gray can be made up of red mixed with green. The same is true of blue mixed with orange and yellow mixed with violet. When we think of gray we often imagine a flat lifeless battleship color, when in reality gray, being made up of complementary colors, can be one of the most rich and beautiful colors of all. Imagine a naturally warm brown fiber dyed in a bath of vivid green. This will result in a kind of gray that one would hardly call dull and lifeless!
Browns, similar to grays, are made up of mixtures of the primary colors. Unlike gray, which is a mixture of two complementary colors in relatively equal amounts, brown is made up of all three primary colors in similar amounts, usually with one slightly dominating the others. Compare dark chocolate with milk chocolate, for instance. Dark chocolate is more blue; milk chocolate is more red. Because it is really a mixture of all three primaries, brown, like gray, exists in an enormous spectrum of rich variations.
Understanding Color Value
All colors can be light or dark, which is known as the value of the color. Whites and most yellows are inherently light in value though some are darker than others; blacks and deep blues are typically the darkest in value. Most basically, color value is changed by adding white to a color (or using less pigment in the case of dyeing), which lightens it. All colors can appear in an infinite range of values. I created the Ombre Alpaca Blanket (see above) to explore the relationship among browns in different values. This project creates a rich spectrum of browns, in which your mind’s eye begins to seek out the different color relationships among the browns. You might notice that the darkest brown begins to look slightly bluish, the medium looks a bit more red, the camel color seems to be quite yellow. When I was working on this blanket I kept thinking of it as a “brown rainbow.”
Color is full of surprises. If you’re in a hurry when you are picking out yarn for a project, playing around with color might not be an option and you might want to stick to the colors suggested in the pattern without trying anything else. But if you have some time to explore, I encourage you to try playing with color, applying the theories and ideas I’ve described here. But don’t let any of this convince you that there is a right and wrong way to put colors together. Think of your understanding of the relativity of color, complementary color, chroma, and value as a set of tools that helps you make color choices.
When shopping for yarn, or when going through your stash for a project, explore a variety of color ideas by pulling several different skeins out, placing them next to one another, moving colors around, and substituting different colors to produce new relationships. Notice the relationships between and among the colors whether you like them together or not. When you find something that pleases you, try twisting different strands together to see the effect. You might discover that you have an affinity for playing with chroma, or perhaps you prefer to mix complementary colors together more than you like staying with a single color family. Whatever the case, the main point of the exploration is for you to find what works for you. The more you work with color in your knitting the more you will find your own unique method for applying it in your projects. Ultimately, the more you develop your own idiosyncratic understanding of color, the more joyous your knitting experience will be.
Child’s Rainbow Scarf
Purl Scarf
Super-Easy Leg Warmers
There is no such thing as a “true” or “pure” color. At right we have five different reds and three different greens. The Ombre Alpaca Blanket at left (and on page 118) is a study in browns.
As a yarn shop owner, I spend a lot of time answering the same questions posed by different customers. In this chapter, I have tried to address many of these questions clearly and simply. For more in-depth discussions of these topics, refer to your favorite reference books or the books I recommend on page 138.
Even the most quickly created simple project can become a treasured gift if made with beautiful yarn. I love natural fibers and that is mainly what I knit with and sell at Purl. Although the occasional synthetic fiber has its place and use, I am much more drawn to the unique beauty of the fibers given to us by nature. Many people worry that natural fibers are difficult to clean and maintain, but by following a few simple guidelines (see page 22) natural fibers generally age beautifully. Following is an overview of each of the fibers used for the projects in this book.
Many people immediately think of wool when they think of knitting; in fact, some people mistakenly call all types of yarn “wool.” Wool is shorn from sheep, each of the hundreds of sheep breeds growing fiber with its own distinct characteristics. In fact, you could probably spend a lifetime learning about all of the different types of wool. Merino is generally considered the most luxurious wool because it tends to be especially fine, soft, and smooth. Wool is highly durable, warm, and insulating and is able to hold its warmth even when saturated with water. Because of its natural elasticity, I think wool is the perfect fiber for beginners.