The Stephen & Steven Tour.

Last Wednesday, at La Casita, I had the fabulous opportunity to meet Stephen West and Steven Berg. They are both knitwear designers that have an attitude and aesthetic that is far from structured and ordinary, but you can't help but to love it. Stephen West can be found at westknits.com and Steven Berg can be found at StevenBe.com.

So, let's get to the knitty gritty shall we?

They put together a trunk show of sorts, and started pulling pieces out of a suitcase and describing how they were made and the design concept behind it. There were 3 apparent themes..... Colors, Gradients, and knit freely.

Stephen West loves to add a "POP" of color to everything. And he likes to add pops to the pops as well. His favorite color, from what I am guessing, is highlighter yellow. He wore a pair of shorts in that color, and also had it accented in some of his pieces. Steven Be loved it too, because he had it lovingly draped around his neck.

So, a technique that they like to use is holding more than 1 yarn while knitting, then dropping one, continuing with the rest, and picking up a different color as the knitting moves along. This establishes a gradient, or Ombre effect that I love. They also love to mix and match colors with an anything goes attitude. Nothing is contrived. If you are knitting a garment, and run out of one color, you just continue on with another color. I admire that sense of freeness. I personally haven't fully let go and allowed myself to do that, but I can see how much fun it is.

This is apparent in Stephen's Parachutey sweater/tunic/dress. It depends on how big you are willing to make it.

I can totally see it over some black tights, with a nice cinch waist belt and heels, and lipstick to offset one of the POP colors. But that's just the stylist in my head talking. He also displayed his color craze with this Dotted Rays pattern.

Now, I had to take a shot of the "junk in the trunk". Then I saw the most beautiful thing ever. This sparkly Pink and Black Yarn.

It is called Galaxy Fingering in the Barbie Dream Zebra colorway, from Wild Hare Fiber Studio. The fiber content is wool and nylon. It's meant for socks, but I want to make something that I can wrap around my neck. Plus, it has sparkles intertwined in the yarn. I can't possible hide those in a pair of boots.

I bought the pattern book from the tour, and in there is the Sharktooth pattern. I am going to give my Barbie Dream Zebra a sharktooth. LOL . I hope to be able to cast on soon, once I get something off the needles. I have never been a huge fan of Garter Stitch, but Stephen West's designs always have these geometric shapes that make it so interesting.

I got to take a picture with both designers, and they signed my pattern book. I had such a fun time meeting them.

Here is my haul from the show.  Knit Simple magazine was complementary.  These guys rock!