Category Archives: doing

Young Designers

Nicola B’s carrot, good enough to eat

Nicola Balakian

Lisa Dillon, Bath Spa

My column in Knitting Magazine No133 is round-up of recent graduates seen at New Designers this year.

Just to clarify a small mix-up in the round-up, that’s not really Nicola (of the cabled carrot). That’s Lisa Dillon who is doing interesting things with texture and synthetic yarns at Bath Spa.

Hope that’s cleared that one up.

Meanwhile, anyone who likes the cut of Cari Morton’s shawl, here’s a link to her site http://www.cariandcarl.com

The silence of knitting

This is Dawn Cole at an In the Loop study day at Winchester School of Art. Her performance piece, The Silence of Knitting, is based on the life story of her Great Aunt Clarice Alberta Spratling, a volunteer nurse during WWI. Dawn showed us some slides of her solar plate etchings that make beautiful patterns out of the writing found in Nurse Spratling’s diaries and letters. Then she sat down and began to knit. The audience weren’t sure what to expect, some music perhaps or a narration, but there was only the ‘cacophony of silence’. The trouble with quiet is that you start thinking about what those women must have been going through as they made socks and clothing for the men folk at the front. All those unspoken messages and thoughts being sent to brothers, fathers and husbands, woven into every stitch. The audience felt rather awkward and there was some shuffling in seats. Dawn worked a shamrock lace pattern, and didn’t stop until she had finished a whole pattern repeat.

Men had eyes removed. Reading Between the Lines, Solar plate etching, Dawn Cole

This autumn’s Rowan magazine is out with an article about knitting in WWI by yours truly.

It has been a moving experience looking into the hardships of the period. You can recognise the same generous and stalwart spirits who inhabit the knitting world today.

“When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrows these gave their today.” John Maxwell Edmonds

What’s #WellMaking all about?

Welcome to the Craftivist’s Garden. I’m an advisor for this exciting new project by Craftivist Collective with Falmouth University and Arts for Health Cornwall that is about collecting data so that we can prove to policy makers that craft is good for you. Of course we know this already, but you try standing up in the House of Commons and saying that, which is what MP for Penryn and Falmouth Sarah Newton would have to do. We thought she could do with some ammunition in the way of data. We need your help to spread the word, and the crafting before our finale next January. Download the app here.

The project was launched last night in London to great fanfare, some good cake and some lovely people. (Lots of quiet stitching and reflecting went on too as we made flowers for the Craftivist Garden.)

This is the flower that I made (while thinking deep thoughts)

Genevieve of Floss & Mischief was there

Hilary of Craft Blog UK

: This is the lovely Sarah Corbett of the Craftivist Collective explaining all about her new project.

Sarah says, “If you’re based in the UK, we’d love you to join in and hand-embroider, knit or crochet a flower for our #wellMAKING Craftivists Garden, while reflecting on the importance of wellbeing and what we need in order to flourish as individuals and as a society.”

Dentelle in Bayeux

A short holiday in Normandy couldn’t pass without a visit to see the Bayeux tapestry/not a tapestry. Research on that one continues, but in the Cathedrale square I came across this antique shop called Napthaline (like moth balls) and had a great haul. The owner was retiring so everything was going. These are some of the things that I bought.

I didn’t know what these interesting things were. They are beautiful translucent colours.

Like all self respecting tourists we drank coffee in a street cafe and made bracelets out of elastic bands.

Cooking up a sweat (er)

Knitting is a lot like cooking. When I’ve been in the kitchen all day the last thing I want to do is eat what I’ve made. Sometimes I can barely taste it anymore after all that sampling and, yes okay, licking out the bowl too. Similarly, after a long time working on a piece of knitting the last thing I want to do is wear the thing. It’s always the wrong shape, the wrong colour or just the wrong me.

This means that my nearest and dearest have been the happy recipients of my labours over the years. My sister Jane was the one who grimaced least, so ended up with most of the jumpers. When she moved continents recently I salvaged whole piles of hand-knits in need of some TLC.

This Patricia Roberts vase of flowers was actually knitted by my Mum. It was called April Showers, though you wouldn’t know it. Being a busy woman, she didn’t have any truck with silly things like rain drops and so missed these out of the finished thing.

What’s fun is trying to match the sweaters with the original patterns. I’m sure some of them have gone the way of small things, but I seem to have stashed away quite a few, and now I’m moving into my own studio (did I mention that a few times already) I have the space to sort them out.

Looking through the old patterns, some of which I inherited from my Mum and Grand-mum, I was astonished to see ones that were from mainstream publications that would steer clear of ‘that sort of thing’ these days. I have a pile that come from the Guardian newspaper. Every week you could write off and they would send you a pattern, these ones are all from Jaeger. One of Jaeger’s brochures announced ‘Life Is Full of Surprises, Why Isn’t Your Wardrobe‘. I’m not sure I want that many surprises…

This Wheatsheaf Aran pattern was by Wendy yarns and given away with The Sunday Times colour supplement in 1984. (When did they stop being ‘colour supplements’ and start being magazines?) I think my sister sent off for the whole kit. It’s astonishing that it has survived, although it’s looking a bit peaky now, thirty years later. Perhaps newspapers will again wake up to the fact that some of their readers are knitters and start doing this again? We could knit a petition.

The Crafter

Words from the craft world