Award-winning Scottish publishing and design
I’m at that stage of developing a group of designs where I seem to be recording a lot of ideas and sketches in my journal. As I was working on something today, I looked back over a few of the spreads with ideas for the designs I’ve recently published – like the Yorlin one above.…
Read More
There are things involved with developing and writing a knitting pattern which you rarely get to see. This is one of those things. Yorlin is knitted top down. This means you can work your cardigan to exactly the length that you’d like, so that it suits your body. The design features two lace panels, using…
Read More
Good morning! When I sketched this yellow cardigan in my notebook towards the beginning of the year, it was with the thought that I might get to wear it, with a favourite dress, at the wedding of my friends, Briony and Will. Like many couples in similar situations, Will and Briony have had to change…
Read More
Good morning! Wow! I really enjoyed your myriad button views! It was fascinating to read through all your comments and I really appreciated hearing so many different perspectives! But it was especially intriguing to me that the blue buttons came out so far on top. I kind of agree with the majority view: the blue…
Read More
Hello! Today I’m putting the finishing touches to a new cardigan which (all being well) I’ll be able to show you on Friday. I have spent the past hour or so poking around the button box . . . with some success, and a wee bit of frustration. I fear my button-vision may no longer…
Read More
Hello! After some welcome warm weather, there’s been an unusually cold snap over the past few days in Scotland. Though we’ve not seen much of the snow and hail flurries that have been bothering friends further north, the air has turned very cold, we’ve put off planting out our broccoli, and have had to protect…
Read More
Hello! It’s Michelle here. Today I’d like to share some words and images about suffrage spectacle and visual identity, a topic that recently came back to my mind through Kate’s writing in her Wheesht essay ‘Elevate’ on Ann Macbeth’s collaborative suffrage quilt. Anne Macbeth’s suffrage quilt as a suffrage banner. © Museum of London The…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
Good morning! Something new to show to you today – our latest shade of Milarrochy Tweed. Dyed to a beautifully saturated hue of blue-y green, this shade is enlivened by tweedy twists and flecks of pale pink and paler green. It’s a deep, bold colour – almost the opposite of the spectrum from our other…
Read More
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…
Read More