Material Girl

 

The last few weeks have all been about experimenting with materials and trying out new techniques.  Working on a new book is always a challenge, you have to come up with a whole bunch of designs in a relatively short space of time, and you have to make sure that your material choices are globally accessible.

My general design style is usually much more organic and sustainable than this - often I'll have an idea, and then I like to reuse things around me, take stuff apart to make the thing in my head.  For a publisher though, they want to know everything in advance; colour, material, size, style.

Which means planning and deciding it all in advance, which means my house is now FULL of wool.  Which is a joy and a curse all at once :)  The best part is, it pushes you out of your comfort zone and you really begin to get to grips with how different materials feel to work with, and what techniques suit what yarns best. 

Here are some samples of some of the yarns I'm working with, there are different jersey yarns, I tend to prefer Zpagetti, but these are some Boodles and Tek Tek too. There's also a new DMC Natura Cotton XL which I've never worked with before, but comes in some gorgeous shades and is an absolute treat to work with.  And then some Katia Big Ribbon, which uses a big ole hook, but crochets up into a light, durable fabric.

(I'm also getting obsessed with the idea of really trying to source and use locally spun and naturally dyed yarns, although that totally won't work from a transatlantic standpoint, it's something that I feel very strongly about,  let's see where that goes...)