Sometimes all you need is a toasty jumper. Earlier this month I decided to grab the nearest yarn and turn it into a cosy winter jumper for myself. No pattern to grade across multiple sizes, no tinkering with spreadsheets, no charts to haul about, and no worries. Just a plain, cosy jumper.
Last year my gran gave me twelve balls of Drops Air in a soft green shade. I am going to be honest here: I would not have bought this yarn myself. It sits on the wrong side of fashion yarn for me with a slightly too-novelty construction. The yarn is basically a very delicate nylon tube filled with alpaca and merino fibres (I think you can juuust make out the nylon netting on the left strand in the photo above). The result is a very lofty yarn with no fibres escaping. As a Continental knitter, I find it quite hard to work as the tip of my needle keeps catching on the netting. I spend a fair amount of time fiddling with my needles when all I want is to knit smoothly in the round.
But knitted up, it does look exceptionally cosy and it feels great against the skin. It just isn't my preferred knitting experience.
I decided to do a very simple top-down raglan for my toasty jumper. I decided upon a broken rib as the sole decorative element and I've added short-row shaping to the back neck (better fit) and lower back (I'm always cold there).
I've just begun my sixth ball out of the twelve. I'll have enough for quite long sleeves .. and then maybe a cowl for those extra cold days? I'm using a 5mm needle for the main body (as recommended by the ballband). The resulting fabric is quite thick - for extra drape I would probably have used a 5.5mm but I wanted cosiness rather than drape. The ribbing is done on a 4.5mm - less rigid than a 4mm would have been (4.25mm would have been optimal but where do I get such a beast?).
I've taken this project everywhere with me and it's so mindless I have been working it through meetings, mornings, and headaches.
I have an actual pile of things I need to make - ranging from exciting new collaborations to class samples - so this will be put on the backburner a bit. But this winter I'll have a new cosy jumper which doesn't need to be anything but a jumper. And this makes me happy.
As someone working as an independent knitting designer, I recognised a lot of what was being covered in the documentaries - from small record labels operating out of a bedsit in Sheffield via creatives forming loose partnerships to dealing with complex distribution problems/solutions and worries over intellectual properties. I love many of the bands covered by the documentaries, but it was eye-opening to see how much of the amazing music was being created in an environment that was in many, many ways similar to how the indie knitting industry works.
Everything I do is created at my kitchen table. I have a small nook with a desktop computer (which needs replacing) and some bookshelves where I keep all my designing resources. I create my own layouts, my partner does my photography & art, I model my own designs, and everything passes through my hands. I deal with emails, accounts, wholesale, distribution, workshop dates, social media, marketing (which is always my sore spot), and obviously pattern designing & writing. I hire in technical editors to work on my patterns, but what you see is what you get and you get me.
And most indie designers work like that. Some have pooled resources, others have grown to the stage where they have one or two people on staff. But we are all just very, very small independent ventures.
Why be independent? Is it that much fun to do accounts at 11am on a Friday night? I think most people understand the allure of having full creative control - and yes, being able to decide what to design in which yarn is amazing - but the allure of intellectual property is even stronger. Quite simply, indies choose to own the right to their work.
I learned a hard lesson when I first started out: I handed over the rights to a pattern for a pittance and saw somebody else make a lot of money from it when I could barely cover rent. And that got me thinking. I still work with mainstream publications on occasion (and some of them are incredibly indie-friendly and lovely!) but time & experience has taught me to be wary of Big Besuited Companies offering me deals too good to be true.
Indies pay the price by having to do all the things - including all the tough things mainstream publishing would normally have done for us - but I maintain it is worth it.
So, clutching my gladioli, I began thinking about where indie knitting businesses are heading.
The BBC4 documentaries on UK indie record labels traced the trajectory from bedsit record labels with rough DIY graphics to bands like The Smiths appearing on prime time TV and finally a world where indie labels are regularly outselling the big record companies.
Knitting is not the music business (there's a big difference in gender make-up for one thing! It made me sad to see many female musicians simply disappear as indie music became bigger in the 1980s and 1990s) but maybe there are lessons to be learned there.
Here are some of the lessons I have gleaned from the documentaries:
Surround yourself with people who understand and support your ethos.
Don't try to follow the crowd but embrace what sets you apart.
Take control of as much of your own operations as you possibly can.
Choose your collaborators with care and imagination.
"Indie"can become a very diluted term when Big Besuited Companies realise it is an untapped market - this will result in products that look, talk, and walk like indies but have big money and committees behind them.
Digital marketplaces mean that everybody can sell their products (music, books, knitting patterns) so quality control is difficult. Indies still need gatekeepers (or "curators" as I believe the Pinterest generation calls it!)
Don't believe the hype lest you want to turn into Morrissey!!
There isn't a right or wrong way of making it work as a creative. Some people work best as part of a larger team with stylists, graphic artists, distribution centres, remote printing, and so forth. Then you have stubborn donkeys like me who enjoy having my fingers in every pie.
What about you as a knitter?
Some knitters love following a particular design house and yarn brand with big budgets and aspirational marketing; others find themselves more at ease at an indie show where they get to know the dyers and the designers. Some people prefer buying a magazine with glossy ads and a plethora of patterns; others like buying single patterns they have especially chosen for one particular yarn. And some prefer to just spin their own yarns and knit without a pattern.
The world is your oyster - you can to pick and choose as you like. And as an indie girl that really makes me happy.
So, I collaborated with Malabrigo Yarns on this little thing.
Crosstown Traffic is its own very definite thing.
I love really variegated yarns but I find it hard to find good patterns for them. What looks amazing in the skein can be hard to handle when knitting - and so I came up with this cowl pattern. The variegated yarn is paired with a semi-solid which lets the wild colours shine in small, controlled bursts.
The end result is a cowl with a very relaxed, very urban feel. It uses two skeins of Malabrigo Twist - an aran-weight yarn which I took up to 6mm (US 10) needles. I added icord edgings for extra sophistication - such an easy technique with stunning results - but the yarn really just speaks for itself.
The name comes from an old Jimi Hendrix song - Crosstown Traffic (link isn't very good, sorry). I was busy sketching when my partner David came home humming the song. It seemed an obvious name for the pattern: easy to remember, relaxed feel and just a bit streetwise.
I chose the colour combination of Twist in Zinc (a matte, pinkish/blue grey) and Plena (azure blue, deep purple, bright yellow and green!) for the sample, but any leftfield combination of semi-solid + variegated colours will work. Because it's a Malabrigo Quickie, the cowl takes just two skeins - one of each.
Stashbusting. I like that.
Finally, let me just leave you with the initial sketch I did for this design. It was a lot of fun trying to capture the feel of the sketch in the pattern photos - I think we did well.
I live in a lovely, leafy part of Glasgow (which you'll know if you follow me on Instagram) but Glasgow City Centre is frequently used as a film location 'lookalike' for major US cities in films like World War Z, Cloud Atlas, and The Dark Knight Rises. It was very cool to hike down some of the back alleys and find some awesome photo shoot locations
Initial sketch for Crosstown Traffic.
I have a busy few months ahead of me - it's workshop season - but I always love to see what you make using my patterns. Make sure to share your photos with me. I'm also just a tweet away - and I'll be sharing plenty of details from my forthcoming travels up & down the country.
The Tryghed hat was released today - the hat's the last HYGGE pattern and it's rather sad to say goodbye to a project that's been really close to my heart. All good things come to an end, though, and Tryghed is a really nice way to finish. I'll write more about the hat itself in a second, but first I want to go a bit Scandinavian on you.
Hygge is really hard to define because it encompasses so many things. We've talked about how it means to be warm, cosy, spending time with good friends, taking your time over coffee, and just kicking back with a good book and candlelight. The feeling of tryghed is really key to hygge, actually. Tryghed can be translated as 'feeling safe and sound' but it is also a really tactile thing. I feel it when I'm wrapped in my favourite quilt or when I walk hand in hand with my partner. I feel it when I'm sitting inside on a rainy night and I am warm. Without tryghed, you can have as much coffee or as warm a quilt as you like - but you won't have hygge.
So, I wanted to translate that feeling of cosy tactile feeling of security into both a hat and the knitting experience.
Tryghed is a fully written pattern which can be knitted by most people. If you can knit in the round, knit & purl, and do basic decreases, then you can knit Tryghed. I have included some sneaky details like the crown shaping and one clever lace round, but this is a hat for most abilities. The yarn is Thick Pirkkalanka, a worsted-weight yarn from Midwinter Yarns and the hat takes just one skein. It is warm, squishy and everything I love in a yarn - again, the idea of tactile tryghed came into play! It goes without saying that I chose to knit the hat in my favourite colour in the entire world..
I'll spare you the photos of me eating a cinnamon bun (we shot these photos on National Cinnamon Bun Day!) but I'll link you to a few Scandinavian recipes for you to try out!
It's been such a joy to see all the beautiful things you've made. Keep sharing those photos with me and thank you for going me on this little adventure into my traditions and homelands.
I was heading home from Yarndale last Saturday. I had been on my feet all day talking to awesome people all day, so was relived to find a supermarket next door to the train station. I bought a sandwich, a fruit salad and some drinks - this would be my dinner as I'd arrive back in Glasgow around 10.30pm. The train was busy with rugby fans heading home from Leeds, but I managed a seat. I sat down, sighed with relief and took a bite of my sandwich. Behind me came a drunk man's voice: ""You should cut down on your sandwiches; you're a fatso" and I paused for a second trying to process what I just heard. The man continued to insult every single female in the carriage before moaning about his ex-wife to his friends. The guy clearly had a problem with women - and I ended up almost feeling sorry for the guy. He was born into this world with all the privilege at his disposal (straight, white male living in a First World country) and yet his life was such a disappointment to him that he felt the need to lash out at other people with less immediate privilege than him.
Then I started thinking about body shaming and how insidious it is. I was the first girl in school to hit puberty, though I was a year younger than the other girls and so, for a very long time, I had a very weird relationship with my body. I am naturally 'blessed' with an hourglass figure which meant I received a lot of unwanted attention when I was an insecure teenager and in my early twenties - both from men who viewed my body shape as an invitation and from catty girls in my school who viewed me as a threat (I never understood the last one, by the way). I wore baggy black clothes for a very long time trying to hide my body.
Looking back, I have been every clothes size imaginable - from a UK size 10 (EU 38, US 6) to a UK size 22 (EU 50, US 18). I wasn't very happy when I was a 10 nor was I very happy when I was a 22. My unhappiness had very little to do with my body and far more to do with my lifestyle: when I was a size 10 I was recovering from illness; when I was a size 22 I had just graduated from university into a job market that had hit rock bottom. Over the years I have learned that I feel most comfortable when I hover around a UK size 16 (though clothing sizes are very arbitrary at the best of times) - and I have realised I feel happiest when I don't hide away in baggy, black clothes. My body is not a shameful object - it is just me.
As I get older, I feel much more comfortable being me. I have also become increasingly aware of how I live in a society that tries to fuel all kinds of insecurities to make me conform and consume. As a woman I'm told: be attractive! be attractive in a really specific way! be attractive in a really specific way and don't have any opinions because that is unattractive!be attractive and then we will tear you down for being attractive! I happen to work in an industry that is full of strong women who run their own businesses. I see a lot more diversity in my industry (though we can always do better, but that is a big discussion and one for another day) than I see in mainstream media. I feel inspired and invigorated by the people who surround me - from the smart, intelligent conversations on Twitter to the slow fashion ethos I keep witnessing at yarn shows. I feel really empowered by the women around me - I am sure most of you don't even realise how fantastic you are!
But if I had not just been at Yarndale; if I hadn't stumbled into this industry where I see awesome women being themselves; if I hadn't accepted myself for who I am; if I hadn't realised that society doesn't want me to be happy unless I conform (and bah to that!); if this train journey had happened to a younger Karie in another place and another time, I think I would have had a very different reaction. And that is actually the thought that's haunted me for the past week or so.
(Yes, that is a new hat pattern. More on which later.)
PS there are a tonne of great resources on how to deal with other people trying to take ownership of your body, how to deal with body-shaming, and how to be a positive role model for young women in your life. I'm not going to add any links to this blog post, but feel free to share links on Twitter etc and I'll happily do a round-up.
At the moment I am on a self-imposed mini-break, so I am a bit late talking about the things I saw at Yarndale. Still, it means I can look back and write about the things that really made an impact.
Firstly, Yarndale turned out to be one of my favourite yarn shows so far. The venue was decked out with crochet bunting, crochet mandelas and a lot of handmade signage. It felt very cheering and welcoming - in other words, very Yorkshire! The vendors were a good mix of perennial favourites, old friends, and small vendors who rarely do shows. I managed to get lost a few times and I know I missed a couple of vendors I wanted to see, but here are some of the vendors that stood out for me:
I completely missed her at the EYF marketplace, so I was determined to seek out Laura's Loom - both her hand-woven fabrics and her yarns are gorgeous. Her materials are sourced from the Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria - and the colours are both rich and subtle. Blacker Yarns was another must-visit. I loved being able to browse their breed-specific yarns and work out future colour combinations in my head. I had lucky enough to previously receive a pre-release sample of their birthday yarn - the gorgeous Cornish Tin - and I tried to ferret out whether Cornish Tin was to remain limited edition or not. The fabulous Sonja said that when it is gone, it is gone. So get your mitts on it now!
The Island Wool Company and I go way back. They backed and supported me when I did Doggerland and we have another collaboration in the works. However, I had actually never met them in person - just a lot of long phone conversations! - so it was a huge thrill to finally meet one half of the team at Yarndale. Many hugs were exchanged and hopefully you'll like what we have in store. Other friends with stalls included Sarah Alderson (who launched her book An Elven Reckoning at Yarndale - my personal favourites are the Norui jumper and the Rhien shawl), Ripples Crafts, The Crochet Project, Joeli's Kitchen, my style crush Jess with her Ginger Twist Studio, Tilly Flop Designs with Julie's amazing knitting postcards and tea towels (I lost track of where you were!), and the ever lovely Ann Kingstone. I also happened upon my old boss from my years with Rowan Yarns - it was so nice to catch up with Jem and see her designs. We both agreed that the past fourteen months or so have been such a whirlwind!
My purchases were modest. I have a lot of things on my plate over the next few months, so I wasn't looking to spend a lot. However, I felt inspired by the Knit British single breed swatch-along, so I went looking for yarn that fit the bill. As Louise pointed out afterwards, I was meant to look for undyed wool but I crave COLOUR at the moment.
A photo posted by Karie Westermann (@kariebookish) on
I was quite taken with the Exmoor Horn Wool - the colour range was really, really nice and the yardage is good - and I am looking forward to seeing how it works up. According to the lovely people on the stall, the yarn is a recently off-shoot from the Exmoor Horn Breeders' Society's work on preserving one of Britain's native sheep breeds. I am weak in the presence of a good story - especially one which involves heritage and landscape - and so two balls came home with me. I do have plans for them that involves more than just swatching, but I am not giving myself a deadline! I also bought one of the Wovember badges from Laura's Loom - it matches my winter coat perfectly!
But Yarndale was also the book-end of two very, very stressful months. I spent my last reserves of energy that fabulous Saturday and I have been exhausted as a result. So, I had a very strongly-worded conversation with my boss (i.e. me), and she allowed me to take most of this week off. She should probably allow me to do this more often! However, the final HYGGE pattern will be a few days delayed, emails have remained unanswered, admin has been pushed to one side, and I've not done any design work. I am sure the world will not end.
Sometimes all you need is a toasty jumper. Earlier this month I decided to grab the nearest yarn and turn it into a cosy winter jumper for myself. No pattern to grade across multiple sizes, no tinkering with spreadsheets, no charts to haul about, and no worries. Just a plain, cosy jumper.
So, I collaborated with Malabrigo Yarns on this little thing.
