More of my Designs

Back in my machine knitting days (haven't touch the machines for 3-4 years) I designed and taught. In that little world I was somewhat known. One time I was teaching in Texas at a workshop for over 1000 knitters and got in an elevator. We were all wearing our name tags and some ladies next to me got all excited when they saw my name. They were from England and had come to the workshop. Both were very excited to meet me because they loved my patterns. I was dumbfounded! People in England knew me for my knitting patterns. The first time something like that happens to you, think you are the greatest person in the world and you pretty much float through the rest of the day.

Then I came home and was again just me - a nobody. One of the sayings I've heard is - you're an expert if you have to travel over 50 miles to teach. So true. Also true is don't expect anyone to know you outside your limited field of expertise!

So - the past week or so I started going thru some of my old items and took a few pictures. Here's a couple more. I'll show a few more another post.

Back during the Gulf war there was a call for patriot garments for a fashion show in Washington DC. This sweater was my item. The obvious red-white-blue. Remember this was 1990. We were into big-bold-bright. I used stripes and stars with the back of the sweater being a big USA star.
When you design for fashion shows it has to be bigger - bolder - brighter. This was never written up as a pattern but ended up on quite a few runways back then. I can't believe how great I thought it was back then!

I also used to take pictures and create garments and afghans from them. This afghan is the Split Rock Lighthouse in northern Minnesota. I've done people's dogs, Fred Astaire and many other pictures. My brother has an afghan from an old design hundred dollar bill - being big into money he loves that afghan.

Finally, I used to teach a class on knitting for the larger figure. I used to teach people how to use different knitting techniques to get a wider fabric from the knitting machine and talk about adapting styles to look good on larger sizes (too bad I don't always follow my own advice!) At the beginning of the class I would let the ladies know there was one garment I wouldn't recommend trying to adapt to the larger size and I would hold up my hot pink bikini.

No one has ever been brave enough to try this little garment on. definitely NOT me!