The My Place project illustrates how a challenge might turn into a creative opportunity
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All articles filed in creativity
A chat with Lynsey Walters
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…
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one week to go!
Well, there’s just one week to go until the start of our 10 Years in the Making Club, and we are all geared up and ready for three months of knitting fun! This is the fifth club we’ve run at KDD, and each one has been a little different. Our first – the Seven Skeins…
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People MAKE Glasgow
Hurrah! It is People MAKE Glasgow launch day! As well as introducing you to what the book’s about, in this wee film you see one of the Glasgow makers featured in it – talented signwriter Rachel E Millar – creating the book’s cover art on one of the interior walls of the KDD warehouse. In…
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An ideal shopping list
I’m currently working hard on our People Make Glasgow book, which approaches its final stages (exciting!) and am finding the different stories the book covers about the city’s making and producing communities really inspiring, thought provoking, and often moving. As well as creative enterprises of all sizes, in fields from woodworking to whisky, the book…
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the mask’s on you
Jaguar and Tiger, Chilapa, 2017. Phyllis Galembo, Mexico: Masks, Rituals (2019) This is the fourth 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…
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crafting futures: a residency of things
Preparing for the Crafting Futures residency reminded me of being a teenager going on “exchange.” One’s bag would always include some representative souvenirs for the family one was visiting: a tin of biscuits or confectionery, a small book about one’s local area. I wanted to bring gifts for my compatriots on the Crafting Futures residency…
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stripey St Catherines
Good morning! Friday is project reveal day – or in this case, outfit reveal day. Do you remember St Catherines – the shrug-style garter-stitch cardigan that’s included in my Shore collection? I originally designed this piece in a solid colour, which I wore, and rather liked, but then Mel knit up a bruce and birkin…
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Crafting Futures: at Braemar
This is the second in my series of posts about the Applied Arts Scotland / British Council residency I took part in last September, and the collaborative work I’m now developing as a result. After leaving Lewis, and returning to the mainland, our group met up with superlatively creative and enabling Lynne Hocking-Mennie, and with…
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different colourways
One of my favourite things about designing is that, after completing my work on a pattern, I get to see it afresh through the eyes of other knitters who gravitate to different colourways. I love these changes in perspective and often I see a design quite differently when a creative knitter simply reverses the shade…
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remembering Walter Crane
Walter Crane, The Triumph of Labour (1891) ©The Trustees of the British Museum It was May Day a couple of days ago, an occasion that puts me immediately in mind of this wonderful image . . . Walter Crane, A Garland for May Day (1895) ©The Trustees of the British Museum . . . which…
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Repair Café Glasgow
Though we’ve not seen one another in person for more than 6 weeks, the KDD team are in touch every day, and, at the moment, one of the things we are working on from our separate locations is our People MAKE Glasgow book. Over the past year, we’ve conducted a series of interviews and photoshoots…
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experiments never fail
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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object lesson
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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Con Alma
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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12 months
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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