Nobody Told Me I'd Need To Do This On A Regular Basis

That's one shawl for magazine publication finished and sent into the world. I wish I could show you, but you'll have to wait until November :) What I can show you is what I got up to this afternoon.

I needed to get a head-shot done for various reasons (not least because my face'll be in a magazine soonish - good grief!). Luckily my Other Half is a talented photographer with a knack for making me relax in front of the camera - this is no mean feat as I hate having my photo taken and I usually pull all sorts of unnatural faces. It took Dave quite a few attempts to get some good shots and I thought I'd share some of his tips for successful photography:

1) Unless you have a really fancy kit, natural light is best. In the photos above I am standing right by a window.

2) Indirect light is a lot better than direct light. Direct light tends to either flatten your features or cast harsh shadows where you least want them.

3) Work with a neutral background. We have neutral coloured walls which work well in this context but brickwork, painted doors and foliage can also work. Remember, you don't want anything to compete for attention, so move that table lamp!

4) Take lots and lots and lots of photos. Dave routinely shoots between thirty and seventy photos whenever we work together on something. Having a lot of photos to choose between makes it  easier to find that "hero photo". For this headshot we actually shot in excess of 90 photos(!) because I just couldn't stop pulling faces.

5) .. and relaxing in front of the camera is something I find really difficult. I keep trying to pose or doing model-like faces - none of which work because I'm a 5'6" lumpy thirty-something woman, not a 14-year-old super-skinny genetic freak. How does Dave make me relax? He makes me focus on something else than that infernal camera pointing at me. He also ensures I feel comfortable - unsurprisingly I won't look relaxed if I'm wearing uncomfortable clothes or in an awkward setting.

I am not saying I look particularly relaxed here but that shawl looks absolutely stunning (especially in the original size photo). Apparently my Other Half is now so well-trained that he automatically starts homing in on knitwear. This bodes well for future Finished Object shoots..

.. which reminds me: come late August/early Sseptember I might be looking for a Goth/steampunk/burlesque type model for some knitwear photos. Sadly I cannot promise much in the way of financial recompense bar coffee & cake at Glasgow's finest retro cake shop, but it is a good chance for any budding model wanting something for her portfolio. Glasgow-based, por favor. And, of course, absolutely no nudity involved (oh please, it is knitwear!).

A Handmade Wedding

Remember the wedding blanket that Glasgow Knit'n'Stitch made? The wedding took place this weekend and it was full of knitterly details. Settle in for some great photos.. The wedding took place at New Lanark about an hour south of Glasgow. New Lanark is a UNESCO World Heritage Site right by the Falls of Clyde. The setting is absolutely stunning and is teeming with wildlife - but New Lanark is also a former cotton mill that now spins the most lovely yarn on-site (there may have been some yarn browsing during the wedding..).

The wedding was very much a handmade wedding. Elaine and her mother Shirley had made the bridal gown themselves over the last five months. It was a stunning dress: it had an empire waist with a subtle A-line skirt and an elegant little train. The fabric did most of the talking with its beaded Chantilly lace. Its clear lines and unfussiness suited Elaine so very well - I think there is often a tendency to smother brides' personalities with ruffles, fake tan, rhinestones and silly hairstyles - but tellingly one of our mutual friends told her: "you look bridal and yet you still look like Elaine!".

But wait! What is that she is wearing over her shoulders? Let us get a better look at that!

The shawl was a wedding present from Lilith of Old Maiden Aunt. In the words of Lilith: "She knew I was knitting her a shawl, but not which shawl it was - and all the secrecy was totally worth it when she, her mum, & her gran all burst into tears when the shawl was presented! " The shawl is the Brora Black Shawl knitted in Jamieson & Smith undyed 1ply cobweb. I am sure Lilith is going to blog extensively about this shawl (I know I would if I were her!) so all I will say is that it took her three months' intense knitting, several members of GKS knitted a few stitches on it, and that Lilith got a special thank you during the speeches. Photo was taken by my very patient partner who had been informed to take as many knitterly photos as possible!

And there he is! No, David is not wearing anything knitted but surely half a metric tonne of woolly tartan counts as being of interest to knitters, right? Also: that's my man in a kilt. Whoop!

Back to the knitting..

That is Ms Lilith wearing her cashmere Laminaria. I love the colour combo she is wearing, incidentally. You cannot see her kick-arse red shoes, but believe me when I say they were awesome.

Lynette is also wearing a stunning shawl - brilliantly it is my Karise pattern knitted in Old Maiden Aunt yarn. How wonderful is that? I think that is a great snapshot of the spirit permeating the entire wedding: everything was made by family and friends for family and friends. I'm going to share a heart-tugging example a bit later on but first back to the shawl parade..

And to the right is the fabulous Paula wearing an equally fabulous shawl (and my second favourite frock of the day - my favourite obviously being Elaine's wedding dress). The shawl is my Elsinore pattern(!) knitted in Wollmeise. The original pattern is a cute shoulder-sized shawl but Paula made sure she got good use out of her yarn and upsized the shawl. You cannot tell but Paula is also wearing handmade jewellery and she made her bag too.

And to the left it's me. I'm not wearing anything knitted or handmade. Awkward.

And that brings me to something I just loved so much about the wedding: the personal touches.

I love this photo which I snapped during the dinner. The wedding cake was made by Elaine's mother and the cake decoration was made by Elaine's talented dad (who had also made all the table decorations). It is placed on a crochet table cloth made by Elaine's great-grandmother. Elaine and Steve had placed family wedding photos on every window sill together with small, pretty flowers. Sitting there I felt surrounded by love and friendship.

And I think that was why this wedding felt so special and why I will look back at it in years to come with such fond memories. The wedding was as quirky, personal, and friendly as the couple themselves. I think that is really what a wedding should be all about (and not feeding an industry of glitz, glamour and fake tans).

Next time I'll wear a handknitted shawl, though.

A Creative Life Is Mine

I was asked for career advice recently - and quite apart by being floored by being asked, it also made me think very hard about what it is I do and why.  This coincided with a friend sharing this blog post about creativity, process and blogging with me. Forgive my rambling, meandering post, but I have thoughts in my head..

One of the most common reasons people give preventing them from doing something creative is that it has already been done. (..) It is as if there should only be a certain number of people in any creative field, as if it were a party in a small house and could get too crowded.

I believe strongly that everybody is creative - this imaginative spark is what makes us human. When I run craft workshops, I always try to push people into embracing their creative sides: 'what happens if you do X & Y? Which colours do you like? Try to combine those.' It always comes as a shock to people but I don't have a textile degree - yet I work within the knitting industry as a craft teacher and a knitting designer among other things. I don't have an art degree, yet I have exhibited my work in galleries. Does this invalidate me as a Creative? No. It just means I am autodidact and I take some interesting detours during my work process.

We are taught that creativity is the expression of a higher ideal in a finished object of great beauty and skilled execution (..) We look with lust and desire at finished products and believe they are created by specialists using talents beyond our mortal capacity to understand.

Our brains try to trick us into thinking that unless we are Picasso, Mozart or Shakespeare, we have no right to express ourselves creatively. I once read Plato. He had a few things to say about ideal beauty and our human inability to attain this. Also, the only way to become better at doing something is by doing it.  I am not a great artist, but the more I draw, the better I become. One of these days I might even become capable of describe the world I see!

We are (..) separated from our own creative power which is what makes us depend on shopping to satisfy all our psycho-spiritual needs. 

And this is key. All marketing depends upon us wanting to be someone else than ourselves. Do you want to be exotic and gorgeous? Try this dress? Do you want to be quirky and creative? Here is the perfect scarf! But what if you could make a dress that feels like you - wouldn't you feel better about yourself because you made the dress yourself, it is exactly how you want it to be, and you get to express who you are?

Even those who appear to be such ‘natural’ creators, those that have identified themselves as ‘creatives’ early in life have had some crucial intervention, some teacher or parent who told them they had talent (..) .

I guess I try to be that crucial intervention whenever I run workshops because I think it's never, ever too late to embrace to inner desire to make stuff.

Now for the crucial quotes:

The value is in the process and the finished product is a continuation of that process, affecting the lives of others, that scarf you made for your dad lives on in the process of his life. Value itself is a living process not to be confined to a number or a thing.

Yes, it is cheaper to buy the scarf and no, your scarf won't look like it was machine-knitted in China - but you created that scarf. Without you, that ball of yarn would just be a long string balled up. This is what still gets me about creation to this very day - that whole thing about making (on a related note, in Scots English a poet is a makar which plays wonderfully into the whole language-as-creation idea I once adored so much).

And

Success, slick production values, money, attention, these are all byproducts of a process of self discovery that will last a lifetime. And they may never come. If the process is right for you it won’t even matter anymore. Any stage of that process is as essential as any other.

This. This.

I don't work with knitting because I made a career decision ages ago. Working within the knitting industry is hard work, I scrape by, and it is far less romantic than you may think. But knitting defines me. I do this because I cannot not do this. It is who I am. And I am more like you than you know.

Taking Comfort

Sometimes a project comes along that just makes you sigh with pleasure. This is one of those projects. It is work knitting, but it also feels like comfort knitting. This is a shawl pattern that is destined for my Doggerland collection. It is knitted in Navia Uno, a gorgeously soft yarn from the Faroe Islands. Technically it is a light fingering yarn - almost 3 ply - but I am working with it on 4.5mm needles which gives it a magical drape, yet a satisfactory weight to the fabric. I am currently on the second repeat of my stitch pattern - the world is distracting me a bit too much with other things, but I need to knuckle down as I have deadline knitting in addition to this shawl.

I am really enjoying working on this collection, though. Part of the fun is researching Mesolithic Europe but also thinking about materials that would have been available to the peoples at the time. I have decided against using glass beads and metal beads for obvious reasons - but how can I justify using wool when I cannot a) find any material on Mesolithic textiles and b) any evidence of sheep? Well, I am allowing myself artistic freedom to use wool but I will attempt to use relatively unprocessed yarn. Obviously knitters using my patterns can choose whichever materials they want, but I have had fun thinking about my choice of materials rather than just reaching for the merino/silk blend and that jar of glass beads.. as tempting as though it may be!

I have been reading a couple of non-related books, too. I gulped down Susan Hill's Howards End is on the Landing last night. I adore books about books and have a big section of my home library devoted to them. Sadly Landing is not so much a Book About Books but rather a Book About Famous People Susan Hill Has Met  - and it does suffer from it.

There are some very good bits tucked away in Hill's book: how to (not) sort books, the physical pleasures of reading a codex rather than an e-reader, collecting books over the years, and how to choose a title for book. However, the good bits are drowned out though by incessant name-dropping.

Did you know she had lunch with Benjamin Britten who liked her novel? That she once waited on a doorstep with TS Eliot? That E.M. Forster once stepped on her toes? That Kingsley Amis once said to her in 'a genuine tone' that he was very proud of his son? That she interviewed one Sitwell and recited Thomas Hardy to another Sitwell? That Bruce Chatwin's parents lived doors down from her? And so it goes on.

I am sticking to Anne Fadiman's wonderful Ex Libris, John Baxter's A Pound of Paper, and Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading. Hill's Landing ended up reading like chatter from a woman who has nothing interesting to say even about the most fascinating things. But did you know she once was on a reading panel with Roald Dahl who signed a book for her?

Sorry.

I better get back to work/comfort knitting. (Fortunately all this knitting coincides with the European Championship of Football - my homeboys won their first match!  I may have biked through Glasgow silently singing old football songs.. this is an expat thing, surely).

Drive-By Blogging

This week has been fun, stressful, and interesting. Prepare for bullet-points as I don't think my brain has the capacity for entire paragraphs. First some knitting bits:

• Rowan has published my Windsor hat pattern. It is free and you can download it from the Rowan website.
• I took part in another crafts/textiles conference at the University of Glasgow. Highlights: Edith Rattay from the Moray Firth Gansey Project speaking about East Coast ganseys with such authority and passion; Di Gilpin and Rosie Eribé asking questions about the heritage and future of Scottish textiles. It was a good day.
• I had a few more commissions for patterns come through my in-box. I am really, really excited!
• And because 2012 has been a fantastic year for me so far (which I needed after some very soul-destroying years not so long ago), I am throwing a mini-celebration. I'm knocking 12% off all my patterns until June 5th - just use "Love2012" when you purchase any of my Ravelry designs.

And some non-knitting bits:

• I finally read some books(!). I re-visited The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald after some 18 years. My first thought? "That'd be a breeze to teach." My second thought? "Damn, but it is slight."
• London Under by Peter Ackroyd was my next read. My Other Half has an affinity for psychogeography and recommended me the book. It was okay - but for a book about the London subterrain it did skim the surface an awful (if you'll pardon me the pun).
• I am quietly addicted to W.E.L.D.E.R. - a word game for iPods and iPads. I am yet to get beyond level 10, sadly.
• Eurovision came around and it was awesome. While I do have opinions on the proceedings, so far I am just listening to Loreen's "Euphoria" for the 464th time.
• And you may enjoy the Overthinking Person's Drinking Game. Hic.

Work In Progress: Doggerland

The weather in Glasgow is hawt - as in 'I need to stay indoors or I shall melt' hot. I have put aside my cardigan project for the time being - although I did find time to separate for back and sleeves - and I have been yearning for a shawl project. Small, light and portable is acceptable for Surprise Summer knitting, right? I had no shawl patterns on the go, so trustworthy Ravelry came up trumps with a delightful shoulder shawl and so I cast on for it the other day. I abandoned it just as quickly. The shawl was not to blame - it was beautiful and very well-written - but I kept going "but if I change that and, oh, you could insert a lace repeat that spanned that section.." Evidently I did not want to knit a shawl; I wanted to design a shawl. I have long wanted to work on a new collection and today was that day. I am currently working on a chart quite unlike anything I have ever worked on before. My other patterns have all been triangular, aimed at beginning lace knitters, easy to modify and rather intuitive. The new shawl pattern will be a semi-circle, aimed at confident lace knitters (although it still has rest rows rather than lace worked on both sides); and you won't be able to combine charts as you please. Working on this is exhilarating, scary and a learning curve. I cannot wait to show you the final shawl.

However, what I can show you is the moodboard I put together for this collection and also explain a bit about the inspiration behind the collection (which will contain other patterns than just shawls).

The collection has a working title of Doggerland, although that is likely to change. Doggerland is a submerged landmass between Great Britain and Denmark which was last inhabited during and after the last great Ice Age to hit Europe. Today Doggerland is covered by the North Sea but once it was a rich, fertile habitat for prehistory humans. Maritime archaeologists are incredibly interested in Doggerland as the seabed may yield fascinating insight into Mesolithic life.

The Doggerland collection is using yarn from the North Sea regions - Britain, Faroe Islands, and Denmark - to explore organic textures inspired by Mesolithic prehistory.

I took a lot of inspiration from visits to the prehistory sections of The National Museum of Scotland and the National Museum of Denmark. I took a lot of photos on worked flintstones, carved antler bones, well-preserved fykes, and excavated shell middens. Lately I have also thought a lot about the landscape - although this is a construct at best - with peat bogs, rolling hills, estuaries, ferns, moss and lichen. Colours play an important role in me imaging Doggerland - expect a lot of earthly tones combined with mossy greens and pale greys.

And so back to work..