Award-winning Scottish publishing and design
Meet Ester, the new hat I’ve designed with Shilasdair Ester is a comfortable, slouchy beanie, designed to make the most of three beautiful shades of plant-dyed Coara – a springy blend of BFL and Shetland. The three natural dyes used here are birch, madder, and alder – whose soft and subtle palette I really wanted…
Read More
As the summer draws to a close, I thought I’d round up some of the many inspiring projects that have been knitted in recent months from KDD patterns, and show you a couple of new designs in our yarns. Last week, Melanie Berg revealed a stunning shawl in Àrd-Thìr, which reminded me of the beautiful…
Read More
Today, I’m delighted to introduce Melanie Berg as the next participant in our European Yarn Community conversations. Melanie is a German designer whose work will, I’m sure, be already very much admired by many of you. Melanie is best known for her shawls, but she also creates gorgeous modern garments, and everything she makes is…
Read More
Kate here! I’ve just about recovered from all our Xpo north fun, and am now back at my desk, finishing work on our latest book project Bold Beginner Knits – a collection of 6 intriguing, wearable, and simply knit-able designs in our beautiful aran-weight yarn Àrd-Thìr – which I created for my friend, and KDD…
Read More
Ta Da! Meet Midstream – the fifth pattern release from Bold Beginner Knits Since I created Rowchoish for the West Highland Way collection, I’ve had a bit of a thing for using simple oblongs to create interesting shapes that wrap around the body. I have so many oblong-y ideas, in fact, that they could probably…
Read More
Are you a beginner knitter who is wary of lace shawls? Does the very idea of putting holes in your knitting scare you? Or does a lace shawl just appear too complicated a thing for you to consider attempting? Well, Footfall – the latest pattern release from Bold Beginner Knits – offers you a deceptively…
Read More
A few months ago, when Jane decided to learn to knit, I thought it might be nice to design a few things just for her. Simple patterns aimed at beginner knitters are sometimes not terribly exciting, either in the making or the wearing, so I set myself the challenge of designing some simple patterns that…
Read More
If there’s one thing I’ve had time for over the past few months, it is my knitting. I think one has to be very, very careful when talking about knitting and mental health, or discussing craft activities in association with terms like “mindfulness”: mental illnesses are varied and complex, and craft is not, in any…
Read More
We are five weeks in to the Knitting Season Club – a three month exploration of creative making (and handknit design), following a format that’s a little different to previous clubs, with weekly essays and creative assignments as well as the usual collection of new patterns. These essays have been one of the most enjoyable…
Read More
Like many people, I think, this style of warm, hard-wearing and definitively wintery sweater fills me with a very particular kind of nostalgia. I first saw sweaters of this kind when I was eighteen, and went away to University. There I encountered a very particular kind of student who wore this type of sweater –…
Read More
I seem to have published a lot of designs in 2018, including thirteen different sweaters. This fairly large number is due to the fact that, in the past year or so, I’ve found my energy for my design work has been massively renewed by different shapes. I’ve created easy throw-over garments with grown-on sleeves and…
Read More
We’ve had a lot going on in 2018! We began the year with West Highland Way. (Myrtle) I created twelve designs for this book, and I also enjoyed the writing I produced for it. Together amounting to the same length as a novella, the West Highland Way essays cover a series of topics that you…
Read More