Maybe my favorite thing about the point I’m at in my knitwear design career is that I finally have the traction to collaborate with “dream” dyers and yarn companies—companies that get tons of collab requests and have to pick and choose. One of my dream collab partners? La Bien Aimée. I’ve come up watching them work with big names like Andrea Mowry, Stephen West, and Norah Gaughan, eyeballing their rich, subtle tonals and delicate speckles that are somehow different than everyone else’s, thinking to myself, “One day…”
As they said to Marvin K. Mooney, the time has come; the time is now.
I finally get to work with La Bien Aimée! I pitched a sweater design in their Helix base (laceweight Falkland/Gotland blend) and Mohair Silk held together. It’s going to be luxe, more luxe than anything I’ve ever designed or maybe even knit; because it’s La Bien Aimée and I’m determined to go all out. I mean, just look at that fabric. I snapped these photos quickly in my studio area a couple of afternoons ago, when the October sun was streaming down just right, and they pretty much encapsulate how I feel about the whole thing. Somewhere Tolkien describes one of the elves (Arwen? probably Arwen) wearing a garment with silver threads woven in and now my brain is full of elves clad in La Bien Aimée mohair. I mean, just look at it:
The sweater is coming in December, and I don’t know how I’m going to contain myself until then. For now? I’d better stop squealing—these sleeves aren’t going to knit themselves.
