Looking back, MEEMEA got its start in November 2024. After a hiking trip with Uli, a dear friend and sock-knitting whiz, knitting had already found its place in my daily routine again. In the evenings, I usually sat with the book “Einfach nordisch stricken” (Simply Nordic Knitting) by Linka Neumann, trying my hand at the many great Wilderness Sweaters she explains so well there.
Due to a small misunderstanding on my part on eBay Classifieds, I already had a very large stash of Lana Grossa Brigitte No.1 wool and really wanted to use it. At the same time, I had snagged the 7th edition of the book “Alte Volkskunst Stricken – ein Werkbuch” (Old Folk Art Knitting – A Workbook) and lost myself in cable and lace patterns. However, I didn’t have a pattern for a garment using this wool and these patterns. Despite initial doubts, I simply picked a color, grabbed my 6mm circular knitting needle, and just got started.
Thanks to the routine I’d built up from Linka Neumann’s sweaters and the great patterns from the workbook, I was able to quickly develop an idea. It was going to be a dress. I didn’t really give much thought to size or exact lengths. I took rough measurements on the dress form, calculated the cast-on based on the gauge swatch, and then I was off. Because of the needle size, the dress grew incredibly fast and was finished in less than 40 hours. I can’t say today how many balls of yarn it devoured or exactly what the respective lengths are. That’s why I don’t have a pattern for the dress.
Everything starts with the first knit.
Shortly after finishing it, I naturally shared the result with friends and received a lot of praise. Since the dress was designed and knitted by me, I wanted to give it a name: “Helmut.” I just found it amusingly silly to give the dress a traditionally male first name, which has now become the standard for my designs.
Still in December 2024, the first (unofficial) MEEMEA knit piece reached the woman who, in a way, prepared the ground for its creation: Uli. At the time, it was naturally a gift and certainly not part of MEEMEA Designs. That only came 1.5 years later and is part of another anecdote.
I enjoyed the design and the creation process so much that from then on, I primarily pursued my own ideas and began to feel at home in this creativity. It all started with the first stitch of “Helmut.”