By: KDD July 5, 2020July 5, 2020 landscape, photography, poetry, seasonal, walking, writinglandscape, nature, oak, oaks, photography, poem, poetry, seasons, trees, writing14 Comments

this oak is

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been really struck by how colourful the oak trees I see on my morning walks are at this time of year, with their wild orangey-red foliage so different to the surrounding trees heavy green. So here’s a poem I wrote in my head about those oaks this morning. The…

By: KDD July 3, 2020July 3, 2020 design, kits, knitting, yarndesign, gardening, knitting, Lace, Milarrochy Tweed, summer, Treit, yarn, yoke13 Comments

treit

Good morning and happy Friday everyone! Today we are feeling particularly pleased because Ardnamurchan is back in stock! And with stock of this lovely tealy-green shade available, we can now release this new summery design of which I’m really very fond – Treit. Treit is a simple tee with a lace yoke, knitted from the…

By: KDD July 1, 2020July 1, 2020 birdsbirds, housemartins, magpies, summer, the indifference of birds45 Comments

magpies

It has taken a while for me to make my peace with magpies. For a long time, as a child, youth, and young adult, they were a creature I profoundly disliked. The reason for this was pretty simple: a magpie killed my tortoise, my only childhood pet, named Werner. So I came to regard magpies…

By: Michelle June 23, 2020June 23, 2020 art, books, History, painting, textilesbig pic, botanical illustration, flora, Kew, Marianne North, Michelle Payne, plants, travel27 Comments

Marianne North

Hello, it’s Michelle here, with a post about Marianne North (1830–1890), a Victorian traveller and nature artist who left an extraordinary legacy. Painting 684. North painted the sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) from a garden specimen in Java. For almost 140 years North’s paintings have been on permanent display in the gallery she established at the…

By: KDD June 20, 2020June 20, 2020 weavingbelt, inkle weaving, loom, pattern, weaving, woven bands24 Comments

red shawl and yellow belt

I imagine most of you were looking at the shawl I’m waving about in these pictures yesterday, but today I’m going to talk about the belt I’m wearing too. I wove this belt back at the start of the year, when I’d really got into pick-up weaving In fact, it was one of the first…

By: KDD June 19, 2020June 19, 2020 design, knittingbeamer, design, knitting, knitting pattern, Lace, pattern, shawl33 Comments

beamer

A shawl for midsummer! A shawl red as a June strawberry, light as an evening breeze! The name of the pattern is Beamer Now, in many parts of Scotland, Beamer is not a particular brand of car, but a word for blushing. To “take a beamer” means to blush – most usually with embarassment –…

By: KDD June 16, 2020June 16, 2020 books, criticism, gardening, landscape, review, stroke, vegetables, walkingbooks, garden, reading, slowness, sustainability29 Comments

slowdown

Hello! how are you all doing? My migraines have been of the annoyingly recurrent / chronic kind of late, and I’ve been having to take things very easy – especially over the past week or so, during which my vision has been very skewy and I’ve had to limit my screen time. Not being glued…

By: KDD May 30, 2020May 31, 2020 History, landscape, textilescarbeth, Glasgow, landscape, racism, Scotland, scottishness, slavery, sugar, sugar aristocracy37 Comments

Carbeth: slavery in the landscape

Here, at Carbeth, we live in a landscape underwritten by many rich and complex human stories. Neolithic people lived and travelled through Carbeth many thousand of years ago and, since these early settlers, this landscape has many stories of passage to tell, from seventeenth-century cattle drovers, to nineteenth-century railway navvies, to the walkers on today’s…

shop

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 Ravelry Tom’s photographic work is available to purchase as high-quality archival prints To date, we have published sixteen books under the KDD, Makadu and…

about KDD

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 recovering from her stroke, Kate supported herself by designing digital patterns for hand-knitting, established an independent publishing company, and began to produce books that combined her skills as…

tutorials

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 tutorial for the…

this oak is

By: KDD July 5, 2020July 5, 2020

landscape, photography, poetry, seasonal, walking, writinglandscape, nature, oak, oaks, photography, poem, poetry, seasons, trees, writing14 Comments

treit

By: KDD July 3, 2020July 3, 2020

design, kits, knitting, yarndesign, gardening, knitting, Lace, Milarrochy Tweed, summer, Treit, yarn, yoke13 Comments

magpies

By: KDD July 1, 2020July 1, 2020

birdsbirds, housemartins, magpies, summer, the indifference of birds45 Comments

Marianne North

By: Michelle June 23, 2020June 23, 2020

art, books, History, painting, textilesbig pic, botanical illustration, flora, Kew, Marianne North, Michelle Payne, plants, travel27 Comments

red shawl and yellow belt

By: KDD June 20, 2020June 20, 2020

weavingbelt, inkle weaving, loom, pattern, weaving, woven bands24 Comments

beamer

By: KDD June 19, 2020June 19, 2020

design, knittingbeamer, design, knitting, knitting pattern, Lace, pattern, shawl33 Comments

slowdown

By: KDD June 16, 2020June 16, 2020

books, criticism, gardening, landscape, review, stroke, vegetables, walkingbooks, garden, reading, slowness, sustainability29 Comments

radius

By: KDD June 6, 2020June 6, 2020

landscape, walking, West Highland Waylandscape, map, walking39 Comments

hello! Sorry to disappear there: sometimes a migraine can really slay me, and that’s definitely been the case with this one. As well as feeling utterly exhausted, I’ve really needed to rest my eyes, so I have spent most of this past week away from the computer screen. It is funny how not sitting at…

Carbeth: slavery in the landscape

By: KDD May 30, 2020May 31, 2020

History, landscape, textilescarbeth, Glasgow, landscape, racism, Scotland, scottishness, slavery, sugar, sugar aristocracy37 Comments

near // far away

By: KDD May 29, 2020May 30, 2020

beasties, photography, playbeetles, moon, photography29 Comments

near far away near far away near far away near far away near far away near and far away near and far away

dressing up . . . 1970s style

By: KDD May 28, 2020May 28, 2020

costume, Family, making, Politics, process, writingchildhood, costume, dressing up, fancy dress, Handywoman, Politics, writing15 Comments

I’ve been suffering with a migraine, and am still feeling very ropey, so thought I’d just follow on from yesterday’s post about masks and performance, with a few images (and words) about my childhood – in which costume and dressing up played a significant role – and which Pilar is now drawing on in the…

the mask’s on you

Jaguar and Tiger, Chilapa, 2017. Phyllis Galembo, Mexico: Masks, Rituals (2019) This is the fifth in my series of posts about my participation in an Applied Arts Scotland / British Council Crafting Futures residency, the work I’m developing as a consequence, and the impact of the project on my own practice. You can read parts…