Thursday 7 May 2020

Is there a style called Schlumpy?

All my knitting this spring has been most illuminating.  My favourites to wear right now are the tops I finished knitting this spring.  




It would be hard for people with a normal purchasing pattern to imagine how much pleasure these things bring me but joy doesn't even come close.  Forgive them.  They all look a bit wrinkly, but they live in a full drawer.  If I include the top I made last year, 


 and a little red cardigan I made for Christmas a few years ago,


I can almost get by without wearing any plain t shirts at all.  Almost.  Wearing these things makes me feel fulfilled as a knitter, but more interestingly makes me think about the kinds of clothes I wear.  

I know what I like: the Langelook style.  I love the soft shapes, the unstructured look, the casualness of it all.  However,

I am short.  All the layering that langenlook is about, would make stumpy wide me wider and stumpier.  In the same way that the really wide ease on some sweaters like Boxy isn't a good look on me, the over long layers of some pieces of that look are not good for me.  Too many over long layers is too much if you are short.  Add my width and it just gets weirder.  

Still, there are ways to make it work. Several of my current pants have a langenlook vibe. Unstructured and wide legged, they rate highly with me.  The dolman sleeve look on my latest simply knit top (the green one) is perfect as long as it doesn't get over wide.  The proportions cannot be as generous on me as on a slender taller person, but, keeping that in mind, it works.      

Which makes me want to take a really good look at some of the slightly cropped patterns that have come out in the last while.  

Love Note by TinCanKnits

Water Bearer by Jacqueline Cieslak

Soldontna by Caitlin Hunter

Sipila also by Caitlin Hunter.

I am thinking I will try a slightly cropped sweater to wear over a tunic length top layered over a pair of nice schlumpy soft wide legged pants.  

I like casual, but not jeans and a tshirt.  I like comfortable, but not really yoga pants.  Wide legged, relaxed fit.  Shclumpy.  Not fitting in to what is on offer at stores doesn't have to be a dead end for your own personal sense of style.  No reason to limit what I try.  Any grand failures, just mean I knit it longer!

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