Sorting the Stash

In the interest of showing you that a) I am not a domestic goddess and b) I have hoarder tendencies when it comes to yarn and books, I took this photo in the middle of tidying the living room.

Pictured: two hours of sorting my stash (about one-fifth of my stash is visible), two woollie horses, a felting project, a dressmaking project, and about one-third of our books.

The stash looks pretty bad in the photo, but it'll look a lot better soon. My biggest downfall is that I have no designated space for things. I would love to have my own studio space with designated storage space and some book shelves just for yarn/craft-related books. Right now I make due carving out an office space in the kitchen and a working space in the living room. It is far from ideal as I spend too much time hunting for specific balls of yarn and needles - but it's better than if I had still been living in my flat in Copenhagen which was oh.so.tiny compared to my Glasgow home. I just keep moving boxes around the house and it gets frustrating at times.

I sort by stash by amounts & weights, to a certain degree. Sweater amounts are kept together, laceweights live together in two boxes, and I keep my odd balls in three containers so I can dip into them for swatching/accessory-making purposes. The Doggerland yarns are also kept together. Lately I have become tough on small oddments of yarn. I used to keep them, but I have begun to realise that it's better for my sanity (and storage facilities) if I let them go.

Quite apart from the massive amounts of yarn in Casa Bookish, I actually struggle most keeping all my notions and needles organised. Yarn is relatively easy, but how do I organise buttons, sewing needles, threads, gauge measures, cable needles, stitch holders, safety pins etc? My knitting needles are currently all jumbled up in boxes - I know some people have beautifully organised needles with plastic pockets, folders and what not. That's never worked too well for me.

Anyway, another couple of hours and the stash will be beautifully organised once more. It's always darkest before the dawn, mm? Oh, and here's a little something I'm working on in Snældan 2ply (NOM).

The mysterious project is resting on top of my Bute cardigan which now only needs one sleeve and a buttonband before it's ready to go. And I might write more about the Snældan project in my next Doggerland post. I've made some decisions. But first I have tidying & organising to do.

(I really want to tackle those gorram book shelves too. I used to have my books alphabetised by author (then under author by publication date) but somebody in this house doesn't believe in that system.. )

Funny Old Life: An Knitterly Interlude

Taking a tiny break from writing about Doggerland. Of sorts. Here are some other things that have been happening.. + BBC4 continues to have unlimited access to my brain. They have just started an archaeology season, for heaven's sake. If you have access to BBC iPlayer, I recommend watching The Peat Bog Mystery. It first aired in 1954(!) and it is an excellent insight into how archaeology was communicated to the masses. No gloves when handling artefacts! Lady archaeologists get to talk about cooking! Sir Mortimer Wheeler is especially fascinating (just check out his wikipedia page). Also, the artefacts themselves are fabulous and you get to see some of the highlights of the National Museum of Denmark including an awkward assessment of the Gundestrup Cauldron ("Nazi eagles"!).

+ I was very amused by this news story: the author of Fifty Shades of Gray went to a Romance Book convention/trade show under an assumed name, unveiled her real identity interrupting a panel discussion before telling them to "stop talking about my book!". Good times.

+ I have been playing with the new Rowan sock yarn, Rowan Fine Art sock. It's their first sock yarn, it's 'handpainted' (well, sponged) in South Africa and has a really interesting base: merino, polyamide, silk and mohair. Hmm. It looked very pretty in the skein:

I wound the yarn last night for a quick swatch. It is quite variegated compared to the semi-solid sock yarns I have been using over the last couple of years, but the variegation works pretty well. For shawl design purposes, I think you'd look at slipped stitches, textures, and well-defined big-chunks lace.

The base is interesting - it has a fairly tight twist compared to other commercial sock yarns but not quite the high twist you get from, say, Wollmeise. The silk makes for nice drape + sheen. Such a contrast to the rustic yarns I've worked with over the last few weeks.

+ I found a photo from my old primary school the other day. This was taken a few years before my time, but I loved it as soon as I saw it. Look at all the handknits! And do I spot handknitted socks on the young gent on the left? My friend Kaisa told me the photo looked like  a cross between Grange Hill (British kids' show) and The Killing. She may have a point.

+ Finally, the fine people of the Netherlands have a new king. Seeing I am not a royalist, that shouldn't really register on my radar. What did register was Garnstudio's patterns they released to coincide with the coronation. Fun little fact: my first knitting project in many, many, many years was a little stripy cotton jumper for the little Queenie when she was first born. Isn't it strange how life works out?

It is a funny old life.

When the Design Process is a Difficult Mistress: Making Doggerland Pt 2

The Doggerland design process. Last time I wrote about all the preparation I undertook before starting the actual hands-on work. I had compiled a moodboard, worked out the colour palette, researched the history/archaeology background and found out that I really had to simplify my design vocabulary before getting anywhere close to the ideas in my head. What happened next? What happened next is exactly what happened between the last post I wrote (posted on April 15) and this one (posted May 2). Other Work happened. I have a portfolio career and it's one that I really enjoy - but it also means that I cannot devote all my time to just one project. Bills need to be paid, projects need to meet deadlines, and clients need to be met. I have a good work ethic, so I managed to carve out time between other projects but it was really frustrating to sit on four finished designs and not being able to release them before I finished the next four designs!

I was also surprised by all the new skills I had to acquire. I had to learn how to use two new software programmes, I had to create pattern templates, I had to write a style sheet (which means I use uniform abbreviations and terms across all patterns) and I had to think of schematics. For an indie designer like me, that was a lot of non-knitting stuff to consider and it took time to get to grips with these things. I could not afford to hire someone to do all these things for me, sadly, so it was learning on the job!

But I got back to knitting eventually.

I mention 'sitting on four finished designs' - I guess I could have started releasing patterns by that stage but I would have felt really uncomfortable if the flow of pattern releases was then interrupted by, say, three deadline projects. I don't think it is particularly fair to knitters when it happens - it would speak poorly of time management on my part to have a start-stop-start flow to the Doggerland patterns. I'd rather have the vast majority of patterns finished by the time I start publishing them. It is fairer to you (and fairer to my peace of mind).

So, where am I at now? I am sitting on 6½ finished designs with most photography done. I took out a couple of patterns a few weeks ago because they felt like filler to me and I'd rather have eight strong designs than have a larger collection. The next few weeks will see me winding down the amount of work I do (i.e. I'll be working a normal working week rather than the insane 60+ hrs/wk I have been pulling the last few months). I once mentioned a Late March release date - I am now thinking it will be June. It is a bitter pill to swallow.

So, what lessons have I learned? What mistakes did I make? Why the beep does it take me this long? Stay tuned.

When the Design Process is a Difficult Mistress: Making Doggerland

It has been just under a year since I first wrote about this great idea I had for a collection of knitting patterns. Doggerland has been a long time coming, in other words. As I started pulling everything together and prep the patterns for general release, I thought I'd share the design process. Hopefully it'll be of some interest to budding designers - I certainly would have loved a series of blog posts on this topic when I first began! When I first got the idea of designing a series of patterns inspired by Doggerland (the landscape now submerged by the North Sea between Scandinavia and the UK), I first began by compiling a moodboard. I began with free association: moss, lichen, flint  and stone. Once I had a good selection of images, I began sorting through them until I could see a definite theme emerging. The colour palette was very easy to spot, but I had to keep chipping away at my pinned images until I was left with strong textures and an organic feel.

See those words? Colour palette. Strong textures. Organic feel. Those became my keywords. I knew those words encapsulated Doggerland. I had to aim for those words every time I worked on the collection.

Next, I did research. I knew I had to learn more about archaeology, the Stone Age (specifically the Mesolithic period when Doggerland began to vanish), and geology. I wanted to learn about what sort of art these people made, what sort of motifs they used, and how they interacted with the landscape. I visited the library, I spoke with archaeologists and material culture specialists, and I I read a lot of academic articles in English, Danish, and German (my German was not equipped for academic papers on marine archaeology, it is fair to say!). I enjoyed this part of the process - possibly I enjoyed it a bit too much because I let it drag on and on. I also forgot what part I was playing: I wasn't a specialist and I didn't need to be. I was the designer.

Oh. Art. Motifs. Landscape. More important words.

Around mid-summer 2012 I began acquiring the yarns I wanted to use. I wanted organic yarns from the present day North Sea regions - I tentatively call them site-specific yarns although that is a loaded term in art circles - because I wanted the yarns to be grounded in a very specific landscape. You will see a lot of Snældan yarns popping up as well as yarn from Garthenor, New Lanark, and Hjeltholt. I was very conscious of the colour palette and as a result I chose mainly neutral/undyed colours (with one notable exception).

Then I began sketching and swatching. This is where I hit a wall. Everything I did turned out to be too complex, too intricate and simply too much. I needed to find a simpler design vocabulary, to pare things down, and to edit my ideas. This took a surprisingly long time. I had my first workable design finished by mid-Autumn 2012, though I had a lot of sketches and swatches to show for all my work. These have not been discarded, but may be reworked into other designs (never throw out ideas!).

I had done most of the legwork - the conceptualising, the visualisation, the research, the sketching, the swatching and even some knitting - but the hard work had just begun.

Next: Moving from ideas into actual objects - and what I could have done differently..

Paper Diary Days

I have bought a paper diary to keep track of my life. I usually keep track of things digitally, but I felt the urge to have everything written in ink on paper. It makes my life feel more tangible, more tactile. Right now my life is pretty much that of the mind: I write a lot plus I keep sketching and swatching for new designs. My brain is very fertile right now - but it does not make for great conversation (or indeed blogging).

I have been somewhat obsessed by indigo recently - that great, troublesome colour that is neither blue nor purple but somewhere in-between. Old Maiden Aunt does a great colour - midnight - and I have a skein of it in a dyelot that comes very close to indigo. I also have a skein of Assynt Lochs, a beautiful sportweight merino from Ripples Crafts. I look at the two hanks and I wonder if this is the beginning of a new colour obsession or whether indigo just reflects this odd in-between time which feels so intangible that I need a physical diary.

No Mood Indigo, though. It is all good. Decisions have been made and new directions are being mapped.

My Doggerland collection is coming on in leaps and bounds. It has been unwieldy beast, but I am getting there. It is all those tiny non-knitting aspects that have eaten up time. I have been fighting with the layout quite a bit and it has been a steep learning curve. I have been so used to writing long text documents that I find it a New & Interesting Experience to incorporate charts and photos. Of course I have published patterns before, but this is on a very different scale and of a very different complexity. Photo shoots have also been giving me problems as the weather has kept us on our toes. Still, I have been able tick off plenty of things on my to-do list and things are no longer moving at a glacial pace (pun intended).

People keep me sane. People keep giving me work. I like people. My paper diary once more comes to my rescue as I can flick through weeks with my fingers and the trailing pages tell me no, yes, maybe, no. And people understand.

And with peace of mind comes a creeping sense of bodily awareness. I live in my head so much that I neglect my body. My beautiful red bike was finally fixed this week. I revelled in taking it to my local bike repair shop which is owned by a kick-ass lady. Apart from fixing bikes (and selling refurbished vintage ones), she also sells vintage knitting patterns and 1970s vinyl records. No artisan beer or fair-trade coffee, but I bet you it is coming. I love my neighbourhood. I must remember to enjoy it more this summer.

Knitting. I must get back to it. It will be so good to finally show you all the things I have been working on. Not long to go now.

Thoughts of Alex and Lucy

I have been debating for days whether or not to write anything about Lucy Meadows.  I have been so filled with sadness and outrage and helplessness - and I wondered why so few of my friends seem to talk about this. A woman taking her own life. A woman whose transition from a male body to a female body was made public property (and publicly mocked) by British press. I worried that I did not have the right to feel sad, outraged or helpless about this because I rest within my biological gender. But I am a human being and it is my right to speak out against hate and ridicule - even if I sometimes have to be reminded about my right to do so. And I think of my former flatmate Alex and I also owe it to her to write about my sadness, outrage and helplessness.

Alex and I shared a flat back in the late 1990s. She had left her native country for Scandinavia partly because of a love affair and partly because she felt misunderstood. We shared a big flat with several others and we rarely spoke. That is, until one night.

I had come home late and Alex was out in the kitchen crying. Yet another boyfriend had broken her heart. Alex always fell quick and hard for macho men who promised to protect her - she was a tiny slip of a thing - and who vowed they loved her for her. Quickly, though, they always started to want to change her. They would buy her clothes and makeup and high heeled shoes and Alex would sit in the kitchen crying.

She told me that night that she was a biological woman who identified as a gay man within a female body and that she preferred to dress as a boy because female clothing made her uncomfortable. She didn't want to transition - she just wanted to be loved for who she was. Her real name wasn't Alex* but she wanted a gender-neutral name unlike her actual name. (And I refer to Alex as she because that was what she wanted me to call her.)

Oh Alex. Wonderful Alex. Shy, funny and skittish.

I was maybe 21 years old and naive for my age, but I grew up a bit that night. Alex was so full of pain and contradictions. We sat there until dawn and she just talked and talked. Our late nights became a habit. I left that flat a year later and I often wonder what became of her. She was vulnerable with very few friends outside the constant cavalcade of awful boyfriends.

Today I wonder if she ever decided to transition because her identity seemed very fragmented and contradictory - with a strong emphasis upon 'boy' - but I also recognise that there are never any easy answers. Identity is fragmented and contradictory and what may seem like an obvious thing to me may not have been an obvious solution to someone as complex as Alex.

So, I read about Lucy Meadows and I remember my late nights in the kitchen with Alex. And I want to shout and cry.

LOVE. Never hate.

* Alex wasn't even what she called herself but Alex will be her name here.