[Music] thank you [Music] [Music] welcome to fruity knitting I'm Madeline
and I'm Andrea and this is episode 130. fruit knitting is a 90-minute program that brings
you knitting inspiration from around the world as well as some extra little Snippets of travel
history and storytelling that we hope adds joy to your life and brings a smile to your
face and we're featuring two great guests in this episode so our feature interview is
with Sue Martin who's the crochet designer behind the mercery and Sue's interview is
in two parts and both parts are jam-packed with information I was really impressed with
the beauty of Sue's designs and the depth of her knowledge both as an artist and as
a teacher because Sue is very skilled at describing her design process so in part one of the interview
Sue shows us how she'll take a section of a painting that inspires her and using her
Kaleidoscope app she'll mirror that section in four ways and that creates a very balanced
image which then becomes the basis inspiration for a new crochet design it's a really fascinating
process to watch and it'll get you itching to try out the process yourself and Sue is
also a really good teacher and she loves to encourage people to move away from just mechanically
reproducing her designs to instead using her designs as a starting point for people to
develop and create their own and in part two of the interviews Sue shows us a series of
very playful activities that really help to demystify the whole creative process so I
think you're going to find this interview invaluable as a learning resource because
I learned so much just from watching it multiple times while I was editing it our second guest
is a Knitter of the world from South Africa Noma and lover is the design behind bigger
than life knits and she has a fascinating knitting story she was knitting professionally
from the age of seven under her aunt's Direction and having started her training so early it's
natural that she's a very technically proficient Knitter but she's also an intelligent and
thoughtful designer who focus focuses particularly on the extreme ends of the size Spectrum with
an emphasis on achieving a great fit and developing a capsule wardrobe we think you'll love her
designs on top of that mum has started a new project in which she's already experienced
some interesting gauge issues I'm going to show you my finished hooked rug and I'll update
you on my knitted chess set so we'll start with me in under construction and as Madeline
said I have started a new project and I am having my usual gauge issues with it but I'm
really excited about it it's a gorgeous design so I'll start by showing you a picture of
it so here's the lovely Natasha Hornby modeling her own design which is called mayron I fell
in love with the design as soon as I saw it it's a modern take on the intricately embroidered
bodices found in folk costumes from various cultures and as many of you know by now I
really love costumes and here's a close-up picture of The Gorgeous stitch pattern so
it has a very clever sideways construction to get the patterning in vertical panels and
that's done using a contrast color in slipped stitches or mosaic knitting and the little
flowers are created by wrapping the yarn multiple times around a cluster of three stitches and
I think the effect just looks fantastic so before I explain my gauge issues I think it's
best if I show you how the sweater is constructed because it's really quite brilliant and it
makes for such an interesting knitting experience so this is the knitting that I've done so
far and I think I'm going to stick it on it's got some circular needles in it if I stick
it on you'll see how it works I think in a more simple way okay and I'll use this needle
as a PIN to try to hold it in place so you start here in the upper sleeve with a provisional
cast on and for any new viewers a provisional cast on or new Knitters a provisional cast
on means that your stitches are still live and you can pick them up later and knit down
in the opposite direction so the upper sleeve is worked in the round and then the shoulders
are shaped with short rows here once you've worked to about this section here you're going
to cast on Stitches along the sides here for the body and you do that with a double-sided
provisional cast on which is going to give you an invisible side seam so I don't know
if you can see that but there's no side seam there I'm going to come back and talk about
a double-sided provisional cast on internet because it's a really cool technique but after
you've cast on your stitches along the sides for the body you're going to knit sideways
so in this direction here and that's because you um Natasha wanted this Mosaic knitting
or slip stitch pattern here to be in vertical panels if she was to knit it uh in the normal
Direction they would end up being horizontal panels so that's how she's achieved that effect
so you start by knitting the right side of the front and then you do the right side of
the back and you knit that until you get to the center point which is in the middle of
the body and then you stop and you do exactly the same thing for the other side of the sweater
but in Reverse so once you've knitted the right half of the sweater and the left half
of the sweater separately if you were to put them on it would look like you're wearing
a sweater or in my case a t-shirt that's been cut directly at the center front and directly
up the center back and you're going to join both halves of the sweater with a center Front
seam and a center back seam and those seams will be done in a three needle a modified
three needle bind off so that's the really interesting part of the construction after
that the knitting is fairly straightforward so you get go back to your original provisional
cast on pick up your stitches and you knit the sleeves in the round downwards and that's
really cool because once you've got the body fitting you you can decide how long you want
the sleeve so you could make them elbow length or bracelet length depending on on how the
rest of it looks then you're going to pick up stitches around the neckline and knit the
neck band and you'll also pick up stitches around the bottom of the Garment to knit the
waistband and that's also cool to be able to do this right at the end because it means
that depending on how it fits you you can add length or make the Garment shorter because
you're knitting downwards in this direction so now I want to get back and talk to you
about the double-sided provisional custom because it's such a cool technique and this
was the first time I've ever done it so what you're seeing here is the side of the Garment
underneath the armhole and this is what it looks like after the double-sided provisional
cast on has been worked in both directions so you can see that it's totally seamless
and it's a very cool technique to do a double-sided provisional cast on you start by crocheting
a chain in a smooth waste yarn with slightly more stitches than you need to knit so I needed
70 stitches so I crocheted around 78 chain stitches I then knitted up my 70 stitches
from the Purl bumps on the back of the crochet chain after that I worked one row in Pearl which
joined the newly cast on Stitches to my sleeve and then with a spare needle much smaller
in size than what I'm knitting with I picked up the Pearl bumps of the stitches that I've
just cast on and this time I'm not picking up from the crochet chain instead I'm picking
up the Purl bumps of the main blue yarn and again I pull the new Stitches that I've
just picked up from the Pearl bumps and this is what it looks like after I've
worked a couple of rows you then unpick the crochet chain and you're
ready to work the front and the back of the sweater as one piece so even though it looks
like I'm knitting in the round you're actually working back and forth in knit rows and purl
rows so that demonstration wasn't meant to be a full comprehensive tutorial it's just
to give you a look at how the double-sided provisional cast on works so I am sure that
most of you have been looking at my knitting and thinking that it's only going to fit a
child and I had the same problem with my modest yeah and you're kind of right the thing is
I nearly always want to knit at a tighter gauge than what most patents recommend so
and that's because I'm quite obsessed with getting very fine a fine even fabric that's
almost that looks almost machine knit maybe I'm a little bit too obsessed with it but
it means that I'm nearly always recalculating the Stitch counts of patterns to fit my preferred
gauge but this time I think I did it in a bit of a hurry and I was a bit sloppy with
my calculation since I made a mistake so with this design the Stitch gauge and the row gauge
are really important and can actually get you to hold this yes of course just hold it
like that so the Stitch gauge because it's the body is knitted sideways the Stitch gauge
is really important because it gives you the length and the road gauge will give you the
width so I'm choosing to knit at 26 stitches per 10 centimeters instead of the recommended
23 stitches so what happened is when I I cast on Stitches with the double-sided provisional
cast on along the sides here I took a stitch count from a larger size and I also added
stitches to that but nevertheless it was still short and so it's too short in the body but
what's really interesting is that although my Stitch gauge is smaller than the recommended
Stitch gauge my row gauge ended out to be exactly the same size as the recommended row
gauge so that means your stitches are quite elongated yeah okay yeah it must mean that
yeah so what I'm going to do is I'm because I'm using really beautiful yarn and I'm actually
really excited to make this design into something that looks beautiful and fits up and fits
me very well I'm going to rip right back to the double-sided provisional cast on and add
even more stitches so I get more length in the body that's so sad you put so much effort
into these flower patterns here yeah yes these cluster flower patterns they look totally
stunning but they do take quite a lot of time but that's okay because I am really motivated
to do a good job of this design so that's an update on my new project I think I'm back
on track and it should be smooth sailing from now on and now it's your turn you're going
to show us your chest set pieces yeah so we're still in under construction this knitted chess
set is a design by the UK toy designer Alan Dart last episode I showed you my chess board
which I finished and it's ginormous I absolutely love it um and since then I've knitted the
white Rooks and three new playing pieces all the chess pieces Are knitted with DK weight
yarn on three millimeter needles I'm using the recommended yarn but instead of sticking
with a traditional black and white I've chosen some additional colors to give my chess pieces
more individuality you can take this as far as you like and get really creative but there
are Legions since it's a game it has to be clearly visible yeah so maybe the color palette
shouldn't be too broad but I think you've done a good choice I think it's going to look
great well you did help me with the colors actually so that was a compliment to yourself
but I agree um so the pawns actually enjoy the most Freedom they get to wear all the
white pawns get to wear any pastel color they like while my black pawns get to wear dark
smoldering in colors yes but I want adding another dark Pawn there with this color Yes
okay so this is only going to fit in with that color range yeah um I did want the king
and queen to be the trendsetters for the higher ranking pieces in the back row and this is
so that the chest piece or the chest set doesn't look too chaotic um yeah so let's start with
the King actually no first of all I'll explain uh the king and queen are wearing a combination
of royal red and dark purple so that means that my Rooks have purple Flags my knight
is wearing purple armor and the Bishops will probably wear light purple robes with um with
the royal red as stoles so I love the night he's a bit wobbly he doesn't have a good seat
he's a very happy night the horses are very pretty he's rearing his horse okay yeah okay
so let's start with the king the king is made up of 10 different pieces which he then sew
together starting with the head you use the same color that you'll use for the cloak in
my case it's dark purple and this is the cap that is worn underneath the crown then you
change to the skin tone for the face and the robe is knitted in Royal Red and just like
with the pawns the arms emitted separately I like how the robe includes just touches
of dark purple around the cuffs and hem the cloak is also knitted separately mainly in
stocking Stitch but with a garter Stitch trimming along the sides to match the cast off etching
the hair and beard Are knitted in Reverse stocking Stitch with the Pearl side facing
outwards and this makes it look like stylized wavy hair which I think is a great addition
and finally you knit his sword you start with a blade and cast on several stitches and immediately
cast them off again and then you do the same thing for the hilt finally you glue them both
together to create the complete sword which is then glued onto the the king onto his chest
and you sort of shape his arms I think they even get glued on yeah they get glued onto
the sword as well to make him look like he's holding the sword who's my favorite I think
he looks the most impressive yes and you've made his little gown a little bit longer so
it kind of trails along behind yeah he's looking very Royal I also love even though it's such
a small detail I love the little cross on the top here yeah it makes the crown look
more impressive yeah yeah okay and then came the queen who as I said before is wearing
the same colors as the king my favorite part about her outfit are definitely the Bell sleeves
I think they're super cool um the sleeves and the color are knitted separately and then
sewn onto the body and the arms uh the queen is also wearing a dark purple skirt and a
bodice in Royal Red and these are knitted together in one piece along with the head
I think she's very pretty she is but the I think the king trumps it's not supposed to
the queen is supposed to I know the most important figure or the most powerful yeah anyway then
I need to do black uh Knight and the night sits very proudly on his little horsey and
has his sword raised into the air or ready to charge into battle you start with the horse
by netting the body the head ears and Mane separately and sewing them together and then
you knit the Knight it was constructed a bit differently from the other figures I think
the horse is really cool the shape of the horse's head and the Mane have worked really
well yeah I think so too although it does look a little bit like he's just sitting on
the horse's neck and he is a bit wobbly as you can see but he stays he stays in his seat
he doesn't fall off he's an active figure he has to move around it's the horse yeah
it's so cool to play with these yeah they they're a bit addictive so tell us how this
one was constructed yeah so you knit the head and body in one piece but then you stop after
his bottom because he's not wearing a long gown but armor you see his legs and feet so
they need to be knitted separately from the body just like the arms are next comes his
helmet and visor in the original design they are the same color as the body but I thought
it would look cool to have them in the same color as the sword like metal to set them
apart from the body and finally the last pieces I made were the white Rooks I talked about
the black rocks and how they're constructed in episode 128 so I won't go into that now
but the blackrocks have purple Flags to match their king and queen my white rocks have blue
flags so that gives you a hint as to what colors I'm going to use for my white king
and queen it's really exciting the more pieces that you add like since we've added these
three pieces you can really see how they're all going to go together very well yeah and
yeah it's very exciting adding more and more pieces to the set yeah I'm finding it quite
addictive to create my two little armies it's really fun okay so coming up next is part
one of our interview with Sue Matton who's the crochet designer behind the nursery [Music] thank you thank you welcome to fruity knitting today we're in
Norwich which is on the east coast of England and I'm with the crochet designer Sue Matton
I only recently came across Sue's work and I was immediately impressed by the beauty
of her designs and the depth of her knowledge and I definitely wanted to feature her work
on fruity knitting luckily for us who has agreed so here we are today in her studio
and we've prepared a lot to share with you so thank you for inviting us here oh it's
my pleasure Andrea thank you so much for for coming to visit me good so before the viewers
have a look at your designs I'd really like them to hear about your background because
you're actually highly qualified as a textile artist and teacher so let's start with a summary
of your journey so far okay so um at 16 I went to art school and I did a diploma in
fashion design and then straight after that I decided that I wanted to specialize in knitwear
design so I did a degree at De Montfort University and after graduating quite quickly I went
into teaching so I was teaching in my local Fe College and I taught on a broad range of
Art and Design courses and then after about 10 years of teaching I felt that I just wanted
to explore my own practice a bit more so I took two years sabbatical and I went to goldsmiths
University and I did a postgraduate diploma in textiles which was amazing introduced me
to all sorts of different creative practices that I'd never considered before and then
after that I did an M.A in textiles at Norwich and that allowed me to really develop my creative
writing and I was looking at filmmaking and animation um textile history and then after
I graduated from the ma course I began teaching there at the University at the University
of Norwich on the M.A textiles course and were you teaching subjects you'd been learning
textile subjects oh definitely definitely it was all very much led by my own practice
which was a really great experience and then I continued teaching in Fe for another 10
years and then just decided that I was going to leave Academia and start my own business
so in 2012 I launched the nursery with no business experience and it's been a bit of
a slow grow but here I am 10 years later and running online courses yeah okay so that's
a lot yeah that's a lot of qualifications behind you and a lot of experience in sharing
with people and your own skills but also helping them develop their own which is I find very
interesting now your business name actually comes from the French word for Haberdashery
the nursery and like you said you've studied textile history so is there an interest historical
connection to the name oh absolutely absolutely so it's a French word for Haberdashery but
also Mercer is a word in the English language as well it was a word for a textile Merchant
historically and Norwich where I live and where I'm from it's got a really rich history
of textile manufacture and trading and in the 19th century Norwich was famous for the
Norwich Shores which were traditionally red they used a lot of red matter dye and there
was in fact a color called Norwich red in the 19th century okay and we used so much
matter in Norwich at the time that people said that the rivers ran as red as blood [Laughter]
there's always these romantic descriptions of them so let's have a look at some of your
designs now I particularly want the viewers to see your gorgeous heirloom blankets that
are supported by online courses but first just tell us what's important to you in your
work both as a teacher and a designer okay so in my own work in my own practice I like
to make functional objects and the things that I'm really drawn to are pattern repeating
pattern and color and so for me really a blanket is just a vehicle it's just a really easy
way of exploring all of those things in a very simple format um so so I like to use
um really Dynamic colors and I'm interested in how shapes and patterns fit together and
so in my teaching work I really see these designs as an opportunity for people to to
take it as a Point of Departure so they can take the general concept of the design but
they can make it their own so I help them choose their own colors and I help them really
see that they can play a role that they can take some ownership over the design so it's
not all about me as the designer it's about how I can help other people create really
beautiful objects themselves okay so they're not just reproducing something you've already
finished and created they're using it as a starting point to just explore their own work
in a way it's like a helping hand for them yes definitely and some people like to kind
of stick to the rules and we'll do products that look very much like my originals and
other people will just really take the idea and run with it and and and create something
that is completely unique and very individual oh Sue's got her blankets hanging up so we're
going to go somewhere else now and then she's going to go through them and and also describe
what her courses involve so this was the first blanket that I designed
as a course as a six-month course and this really came out of a conversation that I had
with a group of crocheters that I was working with in my local yarn shop in Norwich and
we just finished a project and they said to me well what we're going to do next Sue and
I didn't really have a plan so they said Well we'd really like to do a granny square blankets
and I thought okay I'm not sure that I'm very excited by that concept so anyway I went away
and I thought about it and I remembered the work of a modernist painter called Joseph
Albers he was part of the Bauhaus School and he had produced a series of work in fact he
spent most of his life painting a series of work that was simply squares within squares
so colored squares inside other colored squares and he called this series of paintings he
did over 2 000 of them homage to the square and he was really interested in the relationships
between colors he was really interested in the juxtaposition of colors and how they change
when you put them next to other colors how sometimes the squares looked like they were
receding sometimes they looked like they were coming towards you and he was really fascinated
by that phenomena and so I thought yeah I could really I could really use that as a
starting point for a new project so the granny square really lends itself to that way of
working because it is literally made up of squares within squares so what I've done is
I've developed a blanket that has a kind of a design formula to it so I give people a
framework I give people a concept but everybody that makes the blanket chooses their own colors
so every blanket is different basic formula is that there are five main colors in the
center of the blanket and there are four main colors that make up the Border and there are
there's one or more additional colors that I call the Wild colors so these Center colors
they should be a group of colors that travel very easily from one through to the next color
through to the next color and that can be done tonally so it could be done by moving
from a very dark red for instance through to a paler tone lighter lighter lighter or
it could be done as if you were traveling around the color wheel so you could start
with one color and then that color could gradually move into a different color so we could go
from red orange yellow even into green and then the Border colors are colors that again
they have a relationship with each other so they may be similar tonally or they may all
be versions of the same Hue so they might be different tones of green and then clearly
the Wild colors are there just to kind of really bring it to life and add it add a little
bit of spice and and drama to the mix so this course I developed in 2017 and this was the
first online course that I ran and I now have nearly 500 people that are working on this
project online so this has been a really really exciting project for me and then after homage to the granny square
same group of students same question what's next Sue same response I'm I don't know um
but I did have a vague idea I had some images that were rattling around in my head and this
was 2018 and I was thinking a lot about the Dutch masters painters particularly a female
painter called Rachelle Rausch and I absolutely adored her Still Life paintings which were
very melancholic very dramatic really dark backgrounds illuminated subject matter so
all about the contrasts and so I knew that I wanted to design something that had that
kind of aesthetic to it um somebody had said how about hexagon Sue and I thought that kind
of lends itself to some quite interesting floral shapes so that was my next project
to use the Dutch Masters as my inspiration and to use the hexagon as the the format for
for the for the overall Construction [Music] and so when I began designing um essentially
what I did was I took images of lots of different Still Life paintings and I took sections from
each of those paintings and I experimented with my Kaleidoscope app and by mirroring
those those small sections of paintings and I absolutely loved the effects that I was
getting everything always looks balanced whenever you mirror a design if you mirror something
particularly four ways like this is done it always looks balanced and so that's kind of
where I started with that concept and so clearly color is really important to the overall aesthetic
of this design I really wanted it to have the the drama you know what was it that attracted
me to those paintings originally and could I achieve that in this crochet blanket so
I knew that I'd have to have a really full range of tones in in my Yarns um so I'd need
to go from the very darkest colors right down to the very lightest colors I knew that I'd
need my background colors so when you look at the Dutch Masters paintings very dark backgrounds
so that's you know what what these sections are all about um and then the colors of the
subject matter so in this case the subject matter are the flowers so again a good really
broad range of tonal values for the flowers going from the very darkest Reds right through
to these are very pale really pretty pinks so I've got a collection of background colors
that also run from very dark to very light a collection of flower colors and they're
also what I call my leaf colors they don't have to be the color of leaves but I've got
three colors that are my leaf colors so seven background colors six flower colors and three
leaf colors what this blanket really taught me particularly was how beautiful these dark
colors can be these colors are very easy to work with you know we all enjoy working with
these very pretty colors but actually how many of us really spend time considering that
the beauty of these really dark melancholic colors and by using these dark colors together
you really have to look closely at the subtleties of the color so I really enjoyed I was surprised
by how much I enjoyed working with those dark colors and then the way the composition was
put together typically with a blanket you might start on one end and kind of work your
way up through to the to the end or you might be making um Square motifs and joining them
all together with this one I started with this section here which I called the Garland
so this very light section um which is made up of different types of hexagons so we created
this first and then worked inwards and filled the center here and then worked outwards towards
the corners where it starts to get darker and darker and just with the homage to the
granny square blanket everyone chooses their own colors so um 16 colors is quite a lot
to work with um so that's quite a challenge at the beginning of this project to choose
your colors but obviously that's kind of my role and I and I help people with all their
color decisions and and some people have inverted the colors as well so some people have made
their blankets and so that they're very light in the corners and very dark here in the Garland
and again it's really it's a real pleasure to see how my online students can make this
blanket their own and come up with their own interpretations of it and then after wall
flowers I really wanted to use the idea of this floral Garland and use it to create a
three-dimensional floral yoke I kept visualizing it as a garment and so this is Gloria this
is my latest online course and with this with this design I've also used the concept of
flower colors background colors wild color so in the floral motifs I've got three tones
of the flower colors so I've got yellow this dark orange and this kind of burnt um red
color and then in the background I've got a very pale gray I've got a really pretty
lilac and then obviously this dark purple that makes up the body of the work and then
I've got these Wild colors here which is this um lovely um bright green so um this is my
latest Challenge and this is ongoing as we speak [Music] welcome back I hope you really enjoyed seeing
Sue's gorgeous designs and hearing her talk about her design process there's a lot more
for you to see and learn in part two of the interview which is at the end of the program
and Sue is kindly offering fruity knitting patrons a 25 discount off all her self-published
patterns in her revelry store so thanks very much to sue so we're in bringing brag now with me because
I've finished my hooked rug um in episode 128 we featured a Canadian textile artist
called Diane Fitzpatrick and she's famous for her beautiful hooked rugs we brought two
of her rug cooking kits back home with us I chose this one called lady with her dog
and I adapted it a bit to be Jack and I walking in the woods mum got this set which shows
three Knitters and she's going to turn that image into her me and Dad sitting on the couch
and knitting together I think this is a really cool idea so the kits come with some simple
instructions and tips on how to start rug cooking as well as this hook some mixture
of yarn and strips of material this is an example of my kit here so you can see how
big it is and all the different kinds of Yarns and fabrics yeah uh and the motive itself
is drawn onto the burlap already but you can always make changes to it if you want to here's
a picture of my finished rug next to the original you can see that I made quite a few changes
I used most of the yarn provided in the kit but I also used some of our leftover yarn
when I wanted to change the color for example the original kit had a gorgeous curly glossy
orange yarn for the lady's hair but my hair is brown with a little bit of red so I put
together two strands of brown yarn and one strand of orange yarn to get the color closer
to my hair color I also changed the hat to a light blue and turned it into a beret because
I have a beret that I really like and I used some leftover row and felted Tweed in different
shades of green for the grass I also made the dog look more like Jack and gave him a
collar I struggled a bit with the grass in the beginning I combined too many Yarns in
a small area making it look chaotic so I had to unpick it a few times until I was satisfied
but what I like about the final version is that the several large areas are covered with
a single type of yarn which looks calmer rug cooking really is like painting with yarn
it's easy to create a beautiful picture if you already have some painting skills variegated
Yarns are perfect because they do all of the work for you by blending together different
colors seamlessly but it's also fun to combine several strands of thinner yarn in different
colors than this creates a heathered effect I did this for lots of sections so not just
for my hair for example I wanted the trees to have just a shimmer of blue copper and
dark green so I combined these colors here which some of them I think are even Alice
star more colors together with the gray and the black yarn for the trees yeah and I think
that looks quite pretty yeah I actually found that choosing and combining the Yarns and
colors was the most fun and creative but also the most challenging aspect of rug cooking
because the technique itself is actually pretty straightforward um so this was my first time
rug cooking and I'd like to share my experience with you as a beginner and summarize some
of the advice that I got from Di Yen and other sources on the internet my tip number one
is to widen the hole rug cooking is very simple you hold the yarn underneath punch your hook
through the burlap from above and then you pull the yarn through to the top and when
you punch your hole through the burlap it's a good idea to widen the hole I do this by
pushing the fabric in one or two directions with my hook and this makes pulling the fabric
through the hole much easier because you're reducing the friction between your material
and the burlap at first I was worried I'd end up with lots of wide holes so my lips
would just slip out again but with burlap when you loosen the next hole you simultaneously
tighten the first one so this wasn't a problem my tip number two is to space the loops the
answer is to hook into every second or third hole because if you hook into every hole then
the bullet mat will curl up instead of lying flat I found it a lot more difficult than
I had expected to space my Loops because I often ended up with these empty spaces in
between my Loops for this reason it is easier to me at least to hook with chunky fluffy
yarn instead of thin yarn or even strips of material because the chunky yarn tends to
bloom and fill the gaps naturally yeah yeah now my tip number three concerns the loop
height Diane says to make your Loops roughly five to eight millimeters high in the beginning
I was making mine way too short but over time I noticed that it made sense to pull my Loops
slightly higher than I actually wanted them to be because as you create the next Loop
this can take away some of the yarn from the previous Loop and in the worst case you've
completely undone your previous Loop something that's very frustrating but another way to
reduce this problem is by widening the hole beforehand so tip number one again yeah my
tip number four is to work from thin to thick so initially I started by hooking the sky
with this chunky white and blue yarn and then I wanted to fill in the tree branches with
a thinner black or dark Yarns but I found it really difficult to see what I was doing
because the chunky yarn was blocking my view especially on these thin branches here so
I ripped it all out again and I worked on the smaller intricate details first before
moving on to the chunkier larger sections I don't know if this is General good advice
but it made things a lot easier for me to work in this order does that make sense yeah
okay my tip tip number five is to spread your Yarns evenly across the canvas Deanne advises
you to do so because if you run out of a specific yarn you can fill in the gaps with a different
color and it will still look balanced which is really important so I tried to do this
with the sky when using all the different colors uh yeah so when you finish talking
your rug and you want to trim the burlap as you can see there's quite a lot it's good
for you to leave an extra five centimeters because then you can fold it over to hammer
and hide the raw edges also you can block your rug to do so you cover it with a cloth
and then you steam it with an iron and that will help even out the loops a little so we
haven't done that yet no okay yeah so overall I am pretty happy with my first talk to rug
I do think that I made some mistakes with the color choices because you can see that
this lovely pastel like really light bright sky goes very well together with the dark
trees that's what Deanne basically gave me um but I chose these sort of orangey yellow
grass colors not really yeah they just don't look green yeah yeah so that these greens
just don't quite work with these pastel colors it's like two different seasons yeah so in
hindsight I should have chosen different either different scale or different grass but it's
still pretty cool for your first hook to run I enjoyed it and I think people are really
going to want to have a look at the back side so there you go it's very interesting there's
the back side [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music]
hi my name is Norma and I live in Johannesburg South Africa I'm so excited to be sharing
my knitting Journey with you today so I started knitting when I was around five years old
and I was mainly taught by my aunt who was mainly doing some custom knitting for people
in our neighborhood so I was very fascinated with all the work that she was doing every
day and I asked her to teach me how to knit so um from a very early age it's I think it's
around the age of six I was already helping her with her custom orders that she was doing
I started out by helping with just knitting the pattern Bend but later on I was able to
help her with the front panel of a pull over or sometimes knitting one side of a cat again
while sit as the other or working on one sleeve whilst he's working on the other sleeve so
from a very young age I to learn a lot about gauge and tension and making sure that the
way I needed meshed hairs perfectly because we're knitting for other people and the work
had to look very cohesive and look like it had been knit by one person so it was a very
fascinating and very quick learning experience for me in terms of knitting and getting gauge
so at the time we're mainly knitting garments made with cables textured stitches and I was
very fascinated with the certain sleeve most of the knitting that we did had certain sleeves
at the time and we mainly did catechins so I really enjoyed the process of watching her
fit in the sleeve of a comment because when you're holding it up and looking at it it
doesn't look like it could actually fit into a garment but it was so fascinating to see
how it fitted well into the Garment and how oh well it looked when it was worn so even
up to now the certain sleeve is still one of my favorite construction methods so um
when I was in grade one the Champa that I wore at school was half made by me so I contributed
to the meeting of my own comments and to those of my family members so mostly I work on half
of the government and she will work on the other so it was around 1995 when knitting
sort of slowed down or even stopped in some areas so I remember that at our school we're
told that by the time in 1996 we were expected to come to school with machine knitted jumpers
which we need in fishermen rip and viney in the Phoenix shape so everyone had to wear
a similar garment and it was at the time that you would really find Yan in the shops and
mostly and shops closed and I didn't need much around that time and I only picked it
up in 2009 when I met a friend who was also interested in knitting and you started knitting
together so later on a trained rivalry and in 2012 I was already doing a lot of knitting
because I was planning my wedding and working a very stressful job so it was a way to relax
and to enjoy the rest of the evening and then in 2013 my daughter was born and I stopped
working in the corporate space and I started designing my own needs and I published my
first pattern in 2014 and now I have over 160 designs and I'm still so excited about
knitting designing and currently I'm enjoying designing garments reps and I've developed
a love for socks and I've been designing those so I'm so excited to be able to share my knitting
with the rest of the world and I'm so excited to actually share a couple of designs that
I've been working on with you right now the Ester T is named after Esther matlang Esther
is a South African artist who does develop artwork interwork has been featured all over
the world she mainly Works in primary colors and very large motifs that I use to paint
the very Hearts where they developed people live in some fabrics and even some beadwork
so when I was designing this top I wanted to use neutral colors to make the Garment
more wearable and I also had to scale down the designs so that the top can be easier
to grade so this top is worked from the top down and different yolk depths have used more
or less motifs of the pattern and then when you get to the bottom of the Garment there
the design is more vertical in order to lengthen the upper body and to give the eye some rest
from The Busy motifs at the top it's a very fun design to knit you have engaged right
from the beginning some of the motifs include three colors or even four but mostly you'll
be working with just two colors on the Garment I excluded sleeves on the Garment because
I didn't want it to get too busy it's a very quick and easy to need garment and it is worked
on fingering weight yarn the Kanye circuit again is one of the most versatile pieces
that I have designed so the Garment can be worn with dresses both long and short and
it can also be worn over pants with a longer top or camisole and it fits just right so
it's a very easy one to work it's worked from the top down and it's got trickling sleeves
and once you separate the body and the sleeves the body is worked with a simple cable pattern
and at the bottom it's twisted ripping so I've used two-step dripping for the button
pins for the sleeve edges and the body edges for a more elegant finish the cat again doesn't
have any buttons it's open at the front so that it can fit in with so many pieces in
the wardrobe so the comment is quite easy to knit and even an advanced beginner can
also pull this one off and an adventurous beginner can also pull it off so it wakes
up very quickly in Decay way Tian and it's still a very favorite piece in my wardrobe
and it all because it is open at the front it elongates the body and it fits in well
with fitted or flowy garments as well I've always loved waterfall catigans but every
time I went to the shops to buy one I noticed that most of them had too much fabric at the
front and with my height I always look like I was drowning in the Garment so I decided
to design my own turtle table less fabric but we'll still have that water for cat again
fill so the chiselso is the design that I came up with and I'm so excited to be sharing
it with you today so let's talk about the construction so the comment is started at
the back of the neck right at the center we'll start with the collar engine it a certain
length and you also you pick up the stitches here from the provisional custom and you need
the other direction and these are placed on hold then the back of the Garment is picked
up and worked downwards and you do the same for the front whilst working on the collar
at the same time so the front of the Garment is straight and there are no increases here
so what I did was that for the top part of the Garment I worked it in a vertical lace
pattern that is very simple and it's zigzag in shape so when I was separating the top
and the bottom part and changing the lace pattern initially I tried using a cutter Stitch
separation but it didn't look so good and I tried to just knit and separate them but
you won't tell the difference so at the end of the day I decided to bind off all the stitches
and then pick them up again at the back at the back Loop of the Garment and that's creating
this very fancy and beautiful and sturdy line so um the bottom part is worked in a Chevron
lace pattern and there's an i-code aging so that there is a very elegant finish I didn't
want to use gutter's dish or any other Stitch I wanted the Finish to be very elegant at
the front and simplistic and at the bottom there are very few rows of Twisted dripping
so that the cat again doesn't roll over at the bottom so I really love this garment and
I love the way it turned out and so because I wanted the lace pattern to pop the sleeves
I worked in stockinette stitch and they are set in in as I mentioned in the earlier on
that I love a certain sleeve because it gives that fitted look in the comment I wanted the
top part to be very fitted because the bottom part is so much fabric and it was going to
be loose fitting so it sits very well on the body the fairy live strip was my favorite
project to knit ever and it only took me four days to work on this Rift because it was that
much fun to knit so the rep is started right in the middle with a provisional cast on the
left pattern is worked in One Direction and at the end the center Stitch continues being
knitted down in the rest of the stitches are worked in Cutter Stitch and as you wake down
to the end of the rep when you get towards the Aging there is a very simple pattern that
is worked with decreases and increases in yarn overs and a purple bind off so it's very
simple and easy to work once the lace pattern is done and then when you pick up the stitches
here on the first row that you work you also incorporate bubbles so that at the end of
the day you don't even see where the joining is so when you look at the wrap it looks continuous
you can't tell that it was started right at the center so the second half is also worked
the same way after the bottle bind off so this is a very fun to knit project it's worked
in an iron weight and on five millimeter needles and it works up pretty fast and as I mentioned
earlier I only worked on this in four days because it was so enjoyable to knit and they
were the challenging beats and the relaxing bits and the knitting and that's what makes
a project very enjoyable for me and I'll be very happy to need another one in a more neutral
color thermafati rep is named after the tallest mountain in South Africa trip was featured
in the winter 2019 Pom-Pom quarterly and it features simple brioche cables and reverse
document so the rep is worked from the bottom up and you start off with the with brioche
reaping at the bottom and then you proceed to the cables on the ends in one in the center
so the rest of the stitches are wet in Reverse document on the right side and on the wrong
side it's spleen's document Stitch so the rep gives the nature an opportunity to experiment
with simple cabling and working the previous Stitch so most of the rows are Mindless knitting
except for the one where you actually do the cabling so it's a very fun and relaxing knit
and it also gives the Knitter an opportunity to show off some very beautiful yarn that
makes the cables and this reverse document pop so for this rep I was very fortunate to
work with a South African neon Dia Madeleine of Yama Fiber Arts so the yarn was used for
the strip to represent South Africa in the knitting community and I'm so excited about
it last year I was focusing on color designs this year my focus is on building a capsule
wardrobe the Wardrobe that's going to prefers the town and fit in the wardrobes of most
Knitters so whether it's someone who works in the corporate space and needs to dress
in a smart casual way or it's a stay at home mom wears to do school runs walk the dog grocery
shopping run other errands or even go out for dinner with friends I want to do knits
that are going to fit into the Wardrobe and can be worn with various pieces so you can
be wearing your smart pants to work and when you get home just change to a pair of jeans
and walk the dog and still keep on your sweater or your cat again and as always I'll continue
focusing on all sizes with the ends of the spectrum in in the Forefront because extra
small in the much larger sizes usually have fit issues so I'll be focusing a lot on those
so that Knitters in those ranges can also get well fitted garments so the whole point
of a capsule wardrobe is to work with colors and garments that suit your lifestyle and
what you are actually drawn to the most so in my case I'm drawn to neutral colors and
that's what I reach for in my wardrobe more than anything else so I'll be focusing on
neutral colors in my wardrobe and I'm so excited to be sharing those knitting plans with you
and to actually share the designs as the air progresses so thank you so much Andrea in
Medlin for having me on the show because [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello everybody [Music] this is [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] let me go [Music] [Music] [Applause] Welcome Back sophin music
lovers you've just been listening to the South African Gospel Choir Soweto singing sichaba
and I was totally thrilled to find that wonderful music so that I could put it together with
no Mr signs yeah and it's it's quite remarkable that Noma was matching her aunt's knitting
gauge at the age of seven and knitting professionally and I think most people's stories of how they
learn to knit is are fairly similar so it was a real highlight to hear noma's unusual
story and I think her fairy leaves sure you're going to knit aren't you yeah I really love
that design I think it's super cool yeah I love it as well and it's in Aaron weight so
it's going to knit up really fast that's good and Noma is kindly offering fruit engineering
patrons that 25 discount offers self-published patterns in her rivalry store and as Noma
said she designed sweaters Shores socks and accessories and she loves to design pieces
that are easy to work on and at the same time are exciting and not tedious for the Knitter
and her designs have to meet the criteria of being functional simple and elegant so
thanks very much to Noma every month we have a live event with a special guest for our
Shetland patrons the event is recorded and then edited and then it's available as an
audio podcast for both our Shetland and Mourinho patrons so last Sunday our special guest was
Natasha Hornby who we featured in episode 127.
We had an interview there and she and
Natasha also sat on the couch with me so that was a fun event and in January our special
guest was Janet from the green Gable Alpaca Farm on Prince Edward Island in Canada that
was a very fascinating and informative interview because Janet has become an authority on breeding
alpacas for Superior fleeces so for years she's been sending fiber samples from each
of her animals to a special lab for analysis and now she has a massive Data Bank that she
uses as information to help her make decisions on how to breed and how to design her Yarns
so that interview has been edited and it's available for Shetland and Mourinho patrons
to listen to so if you haven't heard it make sure you go and listen to it because it really
is fascinating and Janet is offering fruity knitting patrons a 20 discount of all the
products in her online store so she has a beautiful range of custom milled alpaca yarn
that's exceptionally soft and that she hand dyes herself and she also sells ready-made
alpaca socks alpaca inner soles and other alpaca products so thanks very much to Janet
for the patron discount so we'd like to remind you that producing fruity knitting is only
possible through the financial support of patrons and it is very inexpensive to become
a patron you can do so for just the cost of one coffee per month and every single Patron
makes a big difference to us so if you are watching please do support the show by becoming
a patron and thank you to all the wonderful patrons who have kept the show going so far
so now it's time for us to say goodbye and coming up next is part two of our interview
with sir Martin yeah thanks for spending time with us and we'll see you again in March bye [Music] foreign Crafters think of themselves as uncreative
and you love to encourage people to move away from just mechanically reproducing something
to becoming more confident in their own creativity and Sue has some very short playful activities
in her courses that just help to demystify the creative process so can you share some
of those ideas with us now of course good and so with the homage to the granny square
course it's all about color so I always start that course with quite an in-depth section
on color theory and I encourage people to paint a color wheel so most people know what
a color wheel looks like and most people kind of understand the concept of it but I think
until you actually paint a color wheel you use the paints and you actually experience
and witness the the way that the colors change those subtle nuances in color as you move
around the color wheel that's when you really start to understand the relationships of color
and then by obviously positioning it in a color wheel like this you can see the relationships
you can see the colors that are opposites and the colors that are near each other so
I would always encourage people to do a color wheel and so that's definitely where I would
start and just yeah like you said like you can see this yellow here it's just got the
Vegas Touch of Green in it hasn't it absolutely and I think by positioning your colors like
this you can see why a red for instance might be described as a blue red yeah or it might
be described as an orange red and why perhaps this red might sit more happily with these
colors yeah than it might with these colors yeah and so as with most things it's about
learning the rules isn't it it's but it's kind of getting a set of rules under your
belt and then when you understand the rules then you can start to really play with them
and then you can start to break those rules um and quite often it's the blank page that
people are frightened of don't know where to start and so these are color exercises
that I do in my creative creativity Fire Starter course these are just icebreakers they're
five minute exercises um and but there's a formula to how you do it so you choose one
set of colors that are very close to each other on the Hue Circle and then you choose
one or two other colors that are opposites on the Hue Circle and you just enjoy yourself
so you're not planning you're not overthinking it's like abstract expressionism and it just
takes five minutes to produce a really exciting really Dynamic piece of work it's not a finished
painting and it is really just there to to enable you to enjoy working with color yeah
and there's a a reason why it's a five minute project isn't it absolutely I think it is
once we start overthinking questioning that's when we get stuck and so particularly with
my creativity biased articles it's all about very quick activities that you just you work
your way through in a non-judgmental way so you're not asking yourself does this work
what will people think of it you're just doing the work you don't have time yeah the watch
is on and it's like get it on the paper as soon as possible exactly yeah exactly that
and then you've added some black at the end so the black's really just there just as a
way of kind of generating some focal points um and quite often I find that people will
will feel like these are the most exciting pieces of work that they've done in a really
long time and quite often you don't get that kind of dynamic Joy when you over plan things
yes yeah okay so here's different examples of them so you've used the colors the the
red orange and pink they're all very neighboring colors aren't they and then you've got the
opposite blue is that correct that's right perhaps if we look at the color wheel again
we can see um the relationships of the colors so um when I talk about color rules one of
the first things that we learn are the terminology what the words that we use to describe colors
so we talk about analogous colors so these are colors that are close to each other on
the color wheel and they're always very harmonious they're very easy to work with but once you
start introducing opposite colors or complementary colors into that group then you start getting
really Dynamic Color kind of relationships yeah so with this there can't do that blue
exactly so we've got a group of colors here that are analogous and then we've got opposite
colors here that are being drawn in the blue days and and the turquoiser so that's why
it's so kind of visually Dynamic yeah good it's always about Harmony and Discord Harmony
and discourse exactly yes good so what comes next what's another activity this one looks
interesting okay so again this goes back to um you know the paralysis that can set in
when you're confronted with a blank page where do I start everyone can do it all we all do
this you know we're we're waiting on the phone and we're filling our sketchbooks with with
really quick little Doodles so this is really again an icebreaker it's a way of just enjoying
moving your pen or your pencil on the page and again not over planning not overthinking
and then once we've kind of freed up a little bit then we can start to think about well
what would happen if we frame some of these little exercises and so we've got small frames
and each of those is filled with a little Doodle and then each of these little Doodles
is potentially a Point of Departure for a design it's the starting point for a design
it actually looks lovely like that framed I know and they're great fun to do and I do
these as timed exercises as well so these are I think 90 seconds on each one so again
you don't have time to think about composition you don't have time to plan yes what I find
when you do an activity like that you don't like you said you don't have time to think
and a feeling takes over you just sort of have a mood exactly yeah it almost takes on
a personality of its own and then also the other thing that I like to do is a left-handed
doodle so these are left-handed Doodles and you know you would think that you wouldn't
be able to to draw with your non-dominant hand but it's amazing that it has almost a
different personality and I always re I'm always very surprised and delighted at how
how much I enjoy working with my left hand it's more energetic it is and it's slightly
got that frantic look about it yes they are a little bit manic they're great fun to do
though and what's some of the feedback you've had from people who would think of themselves
not as an artist at or or couldn't draw when they do this what do they say but I mean I've
been absolutely Amazed by the positive feedback that I've had you know the people that have
said I've I've always thought of myself as an uncreative person this is what I was told
when I was at school and a lot of it is because the the the exercises that they set were very
prescriptive draw this still life you know draw this object which is a very difficult
thing to do but this is anyone can do this yeah great so another element that um I think
is really important in any aspect of design so we've thought about color and line with
the Doodles so this is about space and shape so positive and negative spaces we often think
about the the positive shape as being the most important aspect of a design but nothing
is ever seen on its own you know there's always something behind it or something next to it
so other shapes are generated so this is encouraging people to look at the positive and the negative
um and then these become developed into collages and again anyone can work with collage um
it's not particularly about having a drawing skill and it's just looking at at shapes and
beginning to develop repeating patterns yeah like the negative or the shadow is just as
influential like you said and it defines the actual object doesn't it yeah you can look
at it that way absolutely and also how you use color as well so you know which side is
light which side is dark and it will make an image of a seed or move away so these are
these are all again very quick exercises and then from these we we start to look at quite
fun little exercises that um are all about cutting pet folding and cutting and generating
repeating patterns so we start with these fun little um paper dollies and then we start
to develop some quite interesting um shapes which when you lay them you overlay them on
top of different colored backgrounds you can very quickly generate lots of different pattern
ideas definitely and you also use an app on your phone to mirror images don't you to show
people how you can take almost anything and it can be created into a beautiful uniform
pattern yeah I am rather addicted to the kaleidocol app I do spend rather too much time on that
but yeah it is amazing that with one very very small little Motif repeat it several
times and you can very easily and very quickly generate a very powerful repeating pattern
again it's a very quick very Hands-On activity you don't need you know lots of expensive
equipment um but it is about you know what happens when you see it on different backgrounds
and with different colors um so yeah so that that was the paper cutting exercise and then
also using found materials because I think often people are put off by not having the
right equipment or feeling that it might be very expensive and actually I like to encourage
people to use whatever you can find around the house so found materials found pieces
of paper it looks like so much fun and it is it's great fun yeah and and that's and
that is one of the points you know of all of these activities that you know you do it
with a light heart you know you're non-judgmental it's it's it's a fun activity yeah now two
of your blankets um actually use the Rowan felted Tweed and so I'd like you to tell us
why you've chosen to use that yarn but also can you since we're doing activities and things
just to show the viewers new ways of how to look at and work with color can you put together
some different runs of color using the row and filter Tweed and just talk us through
your thought process again so we can sort of get an idea of why you make the decisions
that you do of course yes I'd love to do that okay so yeah I can talk you through a few
color runs and I'll talk you through my process this is kind of how I work when I'm trying
to put a new color palette together it's really difficult to just pluck a new color palette
out of thin air it's always good to have a starting point a reference point and that
could be different things but I think a color wheel is a really good place to start so once
you've painted your color wheel and you've familiarized yourself with the placement of
the colors then perhaps start with a little group of analogous colors so for instance
you could concentrate on a little section here and let's begin by making a little group
of these colors so obviously I can't match my paint colors um perfectly so this is all
very approximate um so let's have a little orange um obviously we're going to have some
Reds and I'm looking for a nice clear saturated colors so obviously with this color wheel
they're all very clear bright colors so at this stage I'm not looking for anything to
kind of gray or muddy I'm keeping these saturation levels up so I'm liking those together and
then we've got another red that can go in here so this is quite a blue red so that's
kind of this side of the circle and then we're moving through these very pure Scarlet Reds
obviously we're now going into the orange and then I could put um a yellow on there
but actually because of these high saturation levels I really like that and I think even
just that would make a really beautiful color palette so that could be a complete one in
itself one in itself or if we use the rule of complementaries we could start thinking
well what's on the other side if I was going to introduce a complementary color what would
that be and it might be something like this so you would probably wouldn't use too much
of it um just a little flash of it to really kind of make brilliant exactly that is gorgeous
and then we could do the the other side then so what would happen if perhaps if we looked
at these blues and blues and greens so again I'm looking for colors that have got nice
bright saturation levels so anything that looks flu or turquoise or green and I'll make
a little run of colors so this was almost as if I was moving
around the color wheel from the blues into the greens and I'm rather liking that selection
um or I could take this out this is quite a minty yes I was going to say that that's
an unusual green yes it is an unusual green so I'm not sure that that's the right green
and I would perhaps put this one on the end so we're moving into the yellows a little
bit Yeah there if we wanted something to just really lift that palette what would we be
looking at so something that was kind of opposite so we're going back to these warm colors maybe
a little pink in there maybe one pink by itself isn't enough maybe we could have a couple
of Pinks in there so the point is that this is your main color palette yeah and these
are here just to add a little bit of spice to just kind of sprinkle into that color palette
if you like I can see that I'm interested how you've got these two colors together because
you might think that they're quite a big difference in value as well but I mean they look beautiful
but what's your thinking with that I think if it for me if they live together quite happily
on on the color wheel I I see I do agree with you that's quite a dark that is quite a dark
green um but I think because they're all in a similar they occupy a similar section on
the color wheel I think that they can work a lot of this is just trial and error really
it's so when I'm playing with colors I'm doing a lot of this you know do I like this does
this work and what I'm looking for is an emotional response to the way that those colors look
you know when you've got it right because you can feel it it literally makes your heart
sing you know and I'll just think oh I love those together um and then so so those are
all very bright quite saturated colors if you've worked with uh tones and so this is
an exercise for instance that I do where we're looking at the tone value of color so it's
not about the Hue red yellow orange green it's about how dark or light a color is so
for any color we could generate a whole tone value scale of dark versions and light versions
so obviously this is based on yellows and so we could look at lights medium slightly
dark and then we could even introduce really dark tones so we could generate a monochrome
palette that was really just based on one Hue Green in this case but we've got a whole
range of tones and we could do that with any color on the Spectrum also it might be that
you don't want all of that color perhaps you like really neutral colors and you're looking
for something that's much softer so a really good place to start would be with a Grays
with your neutral colors and if you've got a lovely collection of yarn like this I mean
the Rowan felted Tweed is absolutely perfect for these exercises and we could just kind
of work our way through some of the more neutral colors and quite often it's the colors that
look a little bit muddy you know the colors that you think well I'm not sure about that
by itself but actually when you put it with a little family of colors it can really sing
um so you know don't don't ignore your neutrals they're really really important um so if you've
got a collection of yarn at home if you've got your own stash at home I think this is
a great activity to just get your yarn out and play with different color stories and
if you keep this rule of thumb in mind so your your and your analogous colors and your
complementary colors you really can't go wrong you said that the Rowan filter Tweed is very
good because it's got so many colors is that the only reason you've chosen to work with
it or what do you like about these colors I mean they are very heathery aren't they
yes and I think they're a really interesting I think it's a really interesting collection
of yarn and I like it for lots of different reasons I think the colors are really strong
you know they're really really um strong and but but there's nothing Brash or harsh about
them they look as if they could almost be natural dyes yes um so there's the quality
of color that I really like but yes you're right it has this heathery effect so within
the yarn there are lots of little specks of other colors which makes it so easy to pair
colors together yeah so there's a little bits of blue in this pink there's also blue in
this sort of salmon color absolutely and yeah okay and I think it's just been designed so
cleverly that in the collection there are little families of colors that all you know
they're ready-made collections of colors so it's it's a fabulous range so so I've I've
read through some of your articles that you've written and you do think deeply about human
nature and behavior and how it applies to our crafting so and I can imagine when people
first look at your beautiful heirloom blankets that some people might have a response in
that they first of all think oh I would so love to crochet that and then they might feel
a little bit overwhelmed at the time commitment involved and then they might also fear their
ability to stick with it persevere and finish it even though they might really want the
project at the end so in that context can you just share some of your very well thought
out ideas on Resistance fear and value in crafting of course three things there value
fear and resistance I think value is a really interesting subject um to discuss particularly
in terms of craft and in kind of modern society we don't always value crafts in the way that
I think that they should be so one of the things that I think that we could be doing
is making sure that we always use the best quality materials that we can that's going
to be different for everybody I always prefer to work with natural fibers um but also I
think to think very carefully about the kind of objects that we're making and how many
objects we choose to make how much material we choose to consume so I would always prefer
to make fewer but very beautiful objects that I think will be valued for a long time and
in terms of fear I think you're right I think people do look at a big project like my wall
flowers for instance and maybe find it quite overwhelming and think that they could never
achieve something like that what I would say is to always just break it down into small
bite-sized chunks and that's how I run my courses so I release the pattern in small
elements so you never have to think about the enormity of the project all you really
have to do is to concentrate on that first step and then moving on to the next step and
then everything is achievable if you break it down like that and one of the reasons why
we do crafting anyway is to relax so you can't make your project turn into a stress for you
exactly it needs to be enjoyable um and then the last thing which was resistance and I
think that we've all lost Arc Rojo at some point you know we've kind of fallen out of
love with whatever project that we're working on and so there are several things that you
can do to kind of generate an interest in a project again and they're quite simple things
like don't overthink it just tell yourself you're going to do it don't have that argument
with yourself today I'm going to do my crochet pick it up and do it it's as simple as that
just start on the very first stitches yeah or sometimes you might need to set the scene
a little bit so talk about it in terms of um in the restaurant industry they talk about
um Miss on plus everything's in its place so set the scene get your beautiful yarn out
get your beautiful crochet hooks out and and just enjoy that um so and the other thing
is on sen which is about the environment that
you're working in so you know are you on the right chair do you feel comfortable have you
got something nice to look at just little things like that that you can kind of that
just help you feel really comfortable and then enjoy your craft yeah and also with resistance
I've heard you talk about I mean we do also have a resistance to working in new ways you
know and that's what your little games and activities are about is to help you get over
those initial resistances or we have resistances to using certain colors and things yes yeah
I think you're right I think that we can build up our own kind of resistance which is about
kind of preconceptions that we might have about what our skills are you know and I might
not be good enough so therefore I'm not going to do it okay well I know from because I've
had a look at Sue's courses and I know that you're a very good teacher because you can
bring Simplicity and Clarity to abstract Concepts which is a real gift to the crafting community
so I'm very happy to have had you on fruity knitting thank you very much well thank you
so much it's been an absolute pleasure good just one last quick question before we finish
up and that's just what's next on the horizon for you okay well I do have a plan um the
thing that I love most is working with people especially in real life on obviously we haven't
been able to do that so much over the last couple of years and just before we went into
lockdown I was running some crochet Retreat so I'd really like to get those started again
um and I'd like to run some crochet Retreats that allow people to generate their own designs
so I think for lots of people who have done the kits they've maybe done my online courses
they're ready to start thinking about doing their own design work I think people have
been surprised at how easily they were able to take ownership of my online courses and
rather than just replicating my design they've actually turned it into their own piece of
work and I think that that's motivated lots of people to to really go down that route
of Designing themselves that sounds very good okay well let's say goodbye to the audience
bye [Music] foreign [Applause] foreign [Music]
