Submission: Tee to Knitscene

After Knit Picks rejected the Padre Island Tee I submitted for their Spring 2015 Collection, I revisited my idea to see what else I could do with it.

Sometimes, when I submit only an idea, if I haven’t invested more than a few hours and a little yarn for the swatch, and I’m not crazy about the idea in the first place (which can happen when you’re waltzing to someone else’s fiddle), I’ll let it go. I can’t sleep sometimes for all the design ideas demanding attention, so I don’t feel compelled to see every idea through to the end.

I liked a lot of things about the tee I proposed to Knit Picks—the alternating bands of ribbing and a rather unusual lace, the easy shape, the knit-in-one-piece construction— but I was working within their guidelines and according to their mood board.

Now, without the constraints of “shapeless” and “striped,” I was free to take the idea under my wing and grow it into something new, something more me.

My new version is a solid-colored top that uses the sport weight yarn I reclaimed from another project. And lest you think I magically got better at estimating yarn requirements, here’s how much I had left over:

More like I got lucky.

Around this time, Knitscene put out a call for submissions for their Summer 2015 issue that includes a “geometric” story. From the call:

Bust out your protractor and get angular. Work zig zags, triangles, squares, even rhomboids into the fabric using lace, texture, or colors. Eye-catching but not overbearing.

It just so happens that the lace bands have eye-catching but humble triangle-shaped openwork, so I decided to submit the tee. It doesn’t quite mesh with their mood board, which has a lot of colorwork samples (which I don’t understand for summer garments—colorwork a) is hot because of the double layer of yarn and b) needs the stickiness of wool to look good) but their call does say lace and there is one lace sample.

Plus, as often as not, the final selections that are published in the magazine look loosely like the suggestions on the mood board, so I have a chance.

There wasn’t enough burgundy Knit Picks Shine Sport left over to knit a proper swatch, so I used some blue Knit Picks CotLin DK (from the Adelante tank top). I’m not worried that this isn’t the best yarn for this top (it’s heavy and looks less than beautiful after laundering) because Knitscene will tell me which yarn they want me to use.

I knit a mini-tee, showing the unique construction, and it’s so stinkin’ cute I can’t hardly stand it.

Let’s hope Knitscene feels the same way.

To Ponder: Integrity has no need of rules. |Albert Camus|