The Last Rows
The final week of the residency was less about making and more about completing.
There were only a few hours left to knit before the room needed to become something else, an exhibiting space rather than a working one. So I turned to techniques I know well but had not yet played with in the context of this project. Familiar ground approached with fresh eyes. It turned out to be the right way to close.
The last two swatches became my favourites of the entire month.
The first was a drop stitch experiment using selected needles on the ribber, dropping them deliberately to create variations in tension across the row. I played with the positioning, alternating where the drops fell across the fabric, and what emerged was a wave effect moving through the knit. Uncomplicated to describe, satisfying to produce, and quietly beautiful in the result. Sometimes the most considered outcomes come from the simplest interventions.
The second was a play on partial knitting. Knitting more on the outer edges of the sample and progressively less toward the centre, allowing the differential in row count to push the fabric into a frill. It was the only sample across the entire residency that did not finish flat. It came off the machine curling over itself, ruffled and dimensional, more sculptural than textile. The kind of detail that would work beautifully as a trim on a garment. Time consuming, as most beautiful things are, but worth every row.
With the last sample finished I prepared the room.
Not much needed to change. The wall was already there, the samples already pinned, the handwritten notes already in place. I tidied the workspace, positioned the machine so it read as part of the story rather than just the means of it, and placed the project poster on the centre back wall where it could be seen and read amongst all the samples. The whole picture, in one room.
That evening guests stepped into the residency space as part of the Cute and Cozy opening night. Fellow makers from the pop up, creatives from the community, people who had wandered in from Johnston St and found themselves reading handwritten calculations beside small rectangles of knitted fabric. There were good conversations. The kind that happen naturally when people are surrounded by process made visible.
It was not a planned project. It was a spontaneous yes to a generous invitation at a moment when I needed exactly that kind of prompt. A month to return to what I love about knitting, not the product, not the price point, not the production schedule, but the making itself. The techniques, the time, the patience, the persistence, and the quiet satisfaction of a swatch completed against the odds.
Fifteen samples on the wall. Each one a record of something attempted, something learned, something that will inform the work going forward.
The Undone Work is done. And something bigger is coming.
