Urban texture and structures, hard surfaces of concrete, metal and glass, or by contrast, tussock grasses, spikey hedgerows, undulating soft hills or rugged rocky outcrops emerging from swirling low-tidal seascapes, shingle and seaweed-strewn beaches: it all inspires me. This book is a personal journey through the landscape, taking in the city, country and coast, seeing patterns and textures in the wild and translating them into yarn, stitch and knit.
As a Fine Art student I experimented with paint, scrim, canvas and paper, creating my own sketchbooks with a palette of textures; smooth, matt, rough, torn, cut, fabric embedded in fibreglass, juxtaposed with outlines of soft smudged charcoal, wood or rusted metal. But the 2D surface was never enough and I sought out sculptural forms, learning fit and shape from the fashion department, and watching how the body moves through life drawing. The body became a new canvas for me and texture was my medium. I have always loved the authenticity of the handmade, the simplicity of creating a practical textile with just two sticks and a continuous thread and then going that extra mile to refine, embellish and make beautiful.
For me, design is an organic practice; not prescriptive but experimental, embracing the complexity of the creative process, those thousands of subconscious decisions that one makes instinctively – this yarn, that fibre, will it work in this stitch, maybe a different colour, a stripe, a firmer cast on, a bigger needle… And then reviewing, refining, simplifying. Of course it involves a lot of ripping back, and swatching; swatches are sketches, thoughts, responses, notes on needles, mostly not cast off but raw and irregular, sometimes a means to an end, always a part of the process. I like to go over the edges, make it asymmetric, return to the same stitch and work it in several ways, in fine or thick yarns, different scales, distorting or exaggerating, even using multiple yarns and gauges within the same garment (see Ecotown). A Japanese cable stitch that looks refined in a fine weight yarn (see Coppice) is deconstructed to create an exaggerated, open design knitted in recycled linen (see Kelp). The same ‘waffle’ stitch knitted in pared back and sophisticated ecru aran in the Neighbourhood takes on a new appearance and feel when worked with super chunky wool and on the ‘wrong side’ in a playful mix of colours (see Rutt).
The twenty patterns in this book are designed to offer ways to incorporate and celebrate texture and, in doing so, to slow down, to be absorbed in the creative process of knitting.
My mission is simple, to create recipes for slow clothes – knitted pieces that become old friends – fashion-less, season-less, thoughtful patterns for all modern makers.
