Yesterday I was weaving some buttons for a project I’m working on (similar to these) and began looking at small weaving projects online. I kept coming across beautiful images of wrapped stones (you know the kind of thing) and decided to have a go. There’s a large collection of pebbles on my desk and so…
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Last October, I went to stay for a week at Carry Farm, in Argyll, to think about my writing. I took BOB the dog with me, but was otherwise alone. I walked by the sea every day, I did a little knitting, a little embroidery, and a lot of thinking. Some of the poems I’ve…
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Good morning! Time for another pattern release today! I love our new Asphodel shade of Milarrochy Tweed – a light, fresh orange colour with bold tweedy neps. I wanted to really celebrate Apphodel’s interest and complexity by featuring it in a garment – so I designed Con Alma A couple of years ago, I designed…
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We are about to take our short festive break, and have all been looking back over the past 12 months. 2019 has certainly been a very significant year for us as a publisher. With our Glasgow printers, Bell & Bain, we’ve completed work on four new titles, and printed around 18,000 books (the largest number…
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Wheesht is published! You can now buy the book in the KDD shop, find out more about it at its dedicated website and we’ve even produced a set of 12 jolly postcards featuring the wonderful illustrations that Tom created for each chapter of the book. If you were part of our club earlier this year,…
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Today we released a new pattern – the Let Glasgow Flourish blanket. Inspired by the work of textile artist, educator, and women’s suffrage campaigner, Ann Macbeth, the blanket echoes a civic banner Macbeth created in 1910. The pared-back colourwork and abstracted motifs I’ve used speak to Macbeth’s own Glasgow Style and makes a wonderful showpiece!…
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Hello, it’s Tom here. As those of you who follow the KDD blog will be aware, I’m interested in many kinds of photography. As well as my knitwear and landscape images, I also work on larger photo-documentary projects. The subject I most often return to in my documentary photography is work. I’m especially interested in…
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I have been thinking a lot over the past week about the difficulties of talking about the mental health “benefits” of a craft like knitting. There’s a lot of really interesting research about crafts and mental health about right now, but I often have problems with the way such research is publicly communicated or presented.…
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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…
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Journals can be many things to many people. Dot-grid journals seem perhaps to be used most frequently as a sort of personal planner: setting health goals, tracking habits, creating useful calendars, checking off items on a to-do list. These are all fantastic ways to use a dot-grid journal – and there are lots of resources…
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A chance exchange on twitter last week (with a poet who shares my name) got me thinking about possible associations between hats and poetry – between heids and haiku. Couldn’t a heid be something like a haiku? Both are small things, of a certain structure. Both are created by human hands and brains, and both…
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One of the many things I really like about the communities and cultures of crofting is their distinctive effect on the way people work. What I mean is this: in towns and cities, jobs tend to become more and more specialised, people do what they do within smaller and smaller categories, individual work occurs in…
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A book like our recent West Highland Way project involves many different kinds of work for me: when producing a collection I spend time coming up with the design ideas, swatching, knitting, re-knitting, pattern writing, working with Mel (who tests the pattern and produces many samples), working with tech editors (who check my patterns and…
Read MoreWell, I sat down a couple of days ago and thought I’d write a quick post about the great new books I’d come across, all of which had been either produced completely independently, or had been commissioned from an independent designer. As I reflected on recent directions in hand-knit design, and digressed into my own…
Read MoreI am sure that many of you may be familiar with the work of my good friend and woolly comrade Tom van Deijnen, also known as Tom of Holland. Tom is perhaps best known for his expertise in, and celebration of, darning, which he puts into practice in his classes and workshops, as well as…
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