grey and white

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 the image of it here’s not all that great), to Ann for the link to her Imitation Game Cowl and particularly to Anne Jorid for solving the mystery of the traditional cardigan worn by Bjørn Skagestad which inspired my Fleckit design.

For indeed it WAS a Fanakofte that Bjørn Skagestad was wearing! I had never heard of this traditional pullover and cardigan style (which is, as Anne Jorid revealed, hugely popular in Norway) and her links led me down a happy Fana rabbit hole for several hours, in which I discovered countless iterations of this intriguing garment, alongside some wonderful contemporary reinterpretations. At the end of the rabbit hole, I found myself here:

. . . at Sidsel J. Høivik‘s glorious work. Wow.

Sitting here in Scotland, with a strong sense of the long-term historical intertwining of our local textile practices and patterns with those of other northern nations, I feel extremely humbled that my Fleckit hoody speaks – albeit completely unwittingly – to a well-established and thriving local Norwegian design tradition that includes countless everyday garments (such as the one I saw on screen) as well as wonderful contemporary patterns like Sidsel Høivik’s extraordinary embroidered bolero.

I suppose that sometimes you just can’t go wrong with a monochrome grey and white palette . . .

. . . or indeed, with two-tone Nordic motifs and patterns. Strangely enough, I also spent much of the festive period working on quite a few things in grey and white . . . which also have a strongly Nordic inspiration. . .this squall and Crowdie version of Hat 101 was one of these things, and I’ll show you another one tomorrow.

A huge thank you to Anne Jorid, and to all of you who left comments yesterday!