Favourite to make

This is going to be a short piece, cos this favourite to make, is way ahead of the entire spectrum of knitwear we produce..

Where making is concerned, nothing excites me as much as making a triangular shawl.

This free pattern from Stephen West, a prolific designer in the knitting world, was the first shawl that I made. I fell in love with the method of beginning with 6 stitches and knitting it to the length and width I wanted.  Triangular shawls can be draped in a myriad ways, from a scarf to a cloak to a cowl..it can be a different wrap every time.

The knitters picked up the method from a complicated chart devised by me ( Explaining symbols in Hindi can kill me), made a few modifications, and after figuring it out for themselves, there was no looking back.Lace, coloured contours, double shades…we have incorporated it all and how people love them!

Where designing is concerned, bedcovers make my creative juices flow. I love the process of sorting out colours and hues which the buyer wants, checking the contrasts and the shades, doing the calculations and placement, and then, handing it over to a knitter who takes a month or more to make the design happen.

Knitting a bedcover myself, can take a year or two-definitely not commercially viable!I knit bedcovers for the beloved ones in my life, but the knitters love knitting and completing a project. They still have to figure out the method behind the madness of the log-cabin placements, but I am working on teaching them.

My favourite method?..throw a heap of squares on the carpet and ask the knitter to solve the jigsaw puzzle, by making one cross appear on the ground. The rest of the pieces, then, just fall in place.