Award-winning Scottish publishing and design
Friday is pattern reveal day, and I have a brand new sweater design to show you! I’m a huge fan of the arched Selbu motifs which are most often traditionally used on gloves and mittens and you’ll see the long-standing influence of these motifs on my design work in hats like Richard the Roundhead, or…
Read More
Hello, everyone! Thanks so much for your comments on yesterday’s post (which if you enjoy on-screen knits as much as I do I suggest you go and read!) I want to say an especial thanks to Davina for the link to the top 118 Twin Peaks knits (I personally have a thing for no72, though…
Read More
Do you become obsessed with sweaters you see in films or TV? I frequently do, and on several occasions these obsessions have developed into fully-formed pattern ideas. Ursula, for example, began life with a very fleeting glimpse of a cardigan worn by a character in South Riding, a 2011 BBC miniseries set in the 1930s.…
Read More
We were able to put quite a few things in the KDD shop last week, including our brand new 10 Years in the Making book. The book is now available for wholesale too, so if you are a bookshop or yarn store (or know a bookshop or yarn store) who would like to stock this…
Read More
We seem to be in the middle of a fairly sustained cold snap in our part of Scotland. Icy days have been followed by snowy ones, with bitter temperatures and freezing fog. I personally like quite chilly weather, and particularly enjoy its transformative effect on my surrounding landscape. During a cold spell, everything starts to…
Read More
I think the month of January – and perhaps particularly this January – often seems rather dark. These are certainly dark days for many of us around the world, but there are some visible green shoots, improving prospects, and the hope of brighter days ahead. I wanted my first design of 2021 to speak to…
Read More
When we are working on a collection, Mel and I often knit several samples of a single design. This not only allows us to test and hone the pattern instructions (for maximum knit-ability, and knitterly-ness) but means we get to see how a design appears in alternate colourways. For Sterntaucher, we thought it would be…
Read More
The KDD online shop stocks our yarn, knitting kits, books, and knitwear (socks, snoods, and jumpers, made right here in Scotland) You can purchase Kate’s hand-knitting patterns as digital PDF downloads through the KDD shop or Ravelry Tom’s photographic work is available to purchase as high-quality archival prints To date, we have published eighteen titles under…
Read More
Kate Davies Designs (KDD) was established by Kate Davies in 2010, when a stroke at the age of 36 ended her career as a literary academic. While learning to live with the effects of her stroke, Kate supported herself by designing digital patterns for hand-knitting, established an independent publishing company, and began to produce books…
Read More
Ester A tutorial to make the 5-stitch star motif that features on the Ester hat. Inside and Outside the Red Box. A Bold Beginner Knits Tutorial for the Footfall shawl Triangular shawl construction. A Bold Beginner Knits Tutorial for the Footfall shawl “Join body and sleeves into yoke” A Bold Beginner Knits tutorialfor the Upstream…
Read More
Hiya, it is I, Bruce. Today I am here to tell you about the history and meaning of a very common Scots word which, it seems, very few of you outside Scotland are aware of. That word is jag. In Scotland, the word jag is often used in reference to pretty much any sharp or…
Read More
Friday is pattern reveal day, and I have a brand new sweater design to show you! I’m a huge fan of the arched Selbu motifs which are most often traditionally used on gloves and mittens and you’ll see the long-standing influence of these motifs on my design work in hats like Richard the Roundhead, or…
Read More
Hello, everyone! Thanks so much for your comments on yesterday’s post (which if you enjoy on-screen knits as much as I do I suggest you go and read!) I want to say an especial thanks to Davina for the link to the top 118 Twin Peaks knits (I personally have a thing for no72, though…
Read More
Do you become obsessed with sweaters you see in films or TV? I frequently do, and on several occasions these obsessions have developed into fully-formed pattern ideas. Ursula, for example, began life with a very fleeting glimpse of a cardigan worn by a character in South Riding, a 2011 BBC miniseries set in the 1930s.…
Read More
We were able to put quite a few things in the KDD shop last week, including our brand new 10 Years in the Making book. The book is now available for wholesale too, so if you are a bookshop or yarn store (or know a bookshop or yarn store) who would like to stock this…
Read More
We seem to be in the middle of a fairly sustained cold snap in our part of Scotland. Icy days have been followed by snowy ones, with bitter temperatures and freezing fog. I personally like quite chilly weather, and particularly enjoy its transformative effect on my surrounding landscape. During a cold spell, everything starts to…
Read More
I think the month of January – and perhaps particularly this January – often seems rather dark. These are certainly dark days for many of us around the world, but there are some visible green shoots, improving prospects, and the hope of brighter days ahead. I wanted my first design of 2021 to speak to…
Read More
When we are working on a collection, Mel and I often knit several samples of a single design. This not only allows us to test and hone the pattern instructions (for maximum knit-ability, and knitterly-ness) but means we get to see how a design appears in alternate colourways. For Sterntaucher, we thought it would be…
Read More
Hello! I’m happy to say we’ve just about completed all our behind-the-scenes admin, and have been able to reopen the KDD online shop today. Among the new things you’ll find there is our just-published 10 Years in the Making book (beautifully produced for us by Glasgow’s Bell & Bain), plus two brand new shades of…
Read More
A few of you asked about the changes KDD has made to the way we use big tech and social media – and about where to begin when considering making similar changes. As a starting point, I would suggest reading Shoshana Zuboff’s The Rise of Surveillance Capitalism, which I read back in the middle of…
Read More
Here’s a moment of reflection, for these quiet, early days of the new year, with a guest post from my good friend Anne Whitehead. Anne found herself beginning a new experimental creative project in the early spring of 2020, and like many makers, discovered that this project came to tell its own story of a…
Read More
On the last day of 2020 here’s a post on a topic I’m sure you are all desperate to hear much more about – BREXIT! Ahem – I’m only joking. In all seriousness, though, it is no secret that the KDD team (like the vast majority of people here in Scotland) have heartily opposed the…
Read More
Hello! We are currently enjoying a very quiet and relaxing winter break. In the absence of any socialising, this has largely involved good food, lots of films and books, knitting (me), creating digital soundscapes from ordinary household objects (Tom) and crisp long walks (both of us, plus dogs). After an extended period of hard work,…
Read More
As the first copies of our 10 Years in the Making book arrived in the KDD warehouse yesterday, I thought (not for the first time) about what a very weird year it has been. We published four brand new titles . . . . . .and created 23 new patterns – the majority of which…
Read More
Lynsey Walters is a fellow Scottish designer of whose bold, colourful work I am an enormous fan – and whose necklaces and earrings (I am thrilled to say) we are now stocking in the KDD shop. You may already be aware, of how much I love Lynsey’s work, as I seem to have worn quite…
Read More
Designing hand-knit garments (and clear instructions for others to follow) can involve a lot of compromising, a lot of accepting that, for a multitude of reasons the finished thing won’t turn out quite as you initially envisaged. But sometimes you design something that looks and feels exactly as you expected. This design started with a…
Read More