Tag: knit

Sharing my Creative Practice

Hi everyone, Firstly, I would like to say a big thank you to those who have followed my on my website for some time, and to those new people who have recently joined me on here. This is my ‘blog’ and covers topics from knitting to travel, inspiration, Shetland, my cats and my workshops.

today, it feels like a long time since I started my Patreon supporters website so, I’d like to update you on some of the exciting knitting posts that I have been uploading onto my Patreon site around the 1st of each month, since last August.

I cover topics such as behind the scenes (of knitting projects, patterns, motifs, colour blending and events) as well as inspiration, links, prompts and every month, there is a downloadable chart or charts in both colour and b/w so that you can use them with your own coloured yarns to knit in your own projects.

I started posting in August – with my first post – For the love of colour work knitting, which is free for everyone and is here 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/for-love-of-work-87220920

Then there is the first August subscribers post where I add half of the motifs that I used in the Stash buster neck warmer – both in colour and in B/W for every knitter to enjoy

September’s post shares the joys of swatching for colour – not for gauge. And I add the last of the neck warmer motif charts to download  – so now, you could knit it yourself without even buying the pattern because you have all the motif charts and all the colours.

By the time we are getting to September, I have written the stash buster neck warmer pattern, that so many people wanted and the pattern is finally launched, which I share first on patreon.

Then people on social media want more than just the neck warmer so I start adding charts of the pullover to Patreon too on the October post called Using my intuition and pragmatism.

In November, I write about finishing off and inspiration. And I also do my first pod cast chat and it is with Irina Shar – which was a bit scary for me but I loved it nonetheless.

December post begins with my love of – it is all about Shetland Dice.  – I tell the original story of my first pattern and why I used the dice patterns  – there are many images of the dice swatches and downloadable charts

In December, I post from my stay in Kyoto and there is a free little story on the needle shop and I post photos of knitting in the dry raked Zen gardens in the temples, which I fell in love with.  On January 1st, coming from Kyoto, I share how the city has inspired my love of colour and I start swatching for Kyoto Baby pattern – there are beautiful photographs fo the temple gardens and of my swatches and of the fabulous Wedding kimono that started my love of Crimson.

In February, I post about my behind the scenes of designing the Kyoto Baby hat and there are downloadable charts of the motifs.

March’s post is already written, it will be posted on 1st March – there will be downloadable charts, behind the scenes on my upcoming Rowan Connect workshop, and I will be joining a crochet group and there’s links to really interesting stuff.

So, you see, there is so much to get your teeth into.

There are  5 different levels of memberships.  The knitting level only – is £5.00 a month – cheaper thana a cuppa and a biscuit in a café – and that’s gone in 10 minutes.   Your subscription also goes towards supporting me as an artist – to continue creating.  If you join now, you get all the older posts back dated so it is a wonderful opportunity to see and read so many months of posts.

There is an expensive tier where you get a free workshop and 1:1 tutorial with me too and I have one incredibly generous supporter who joined at this level.

Each knitting subscriber, also gets 20% discount on all of my patterns on ravelry and a discount of 10% on my online workshops.

So, if you like my work, and if you follow on here, you can get much more from Patreon –

thank you to my current subscribers. some have left, many have stuck with me. I am back, I have energy again. I am looking forward to March’s post 🙂

Let me know your thoughts

Very best wishes

Tracey

Sea Urchin Hat pattern

January 2024

I thought that it was the Sea Urchin hat pattern’s third anniversary, but, because we slipped into 2024, when I was in Japan, I finally realised that this unassuming first design pattern of mine, is a big FOUR years.

I gave it the name of Sea Urchin Shetland pattern, after collecting Sea Urchin shells in Brindister on the West coast of Shetland in the December of 2019.

There were so many on the hills making the lunch tables for wild birds to crack open sea shells, that I began to call the place, ‘Sea Urchin Hill’.   

So much has happened since the inception of this little beanie pattern, that I had already been making up in vintage tapestry yarn for some time.  In January 2020, I formalised the pattern a released it.  I didn’t know about test knitters or pricing or anything, and it flew.   It was the colours, you see.  I made the pattern beanie up in my very first use of Jamiesons of Shetland, Spindrift, after returning from 2 months of living on Fair Isle with Mati Ventrillon, as intern, at the age of 56.  It was around that time, after many visits to Shetland, that I began to feel at home there, and think about moving to the islands. 

I look back to the time of writing and designing this little pattern and now see that is it was the Kickstarter to my creative design process – the beginning of how I saw colour in knitting and how I began to blend those colours.   The pattern became incorporated into my online colour blending workshops and was the possibility for a new me. 

I designed the pattern on the doorstep, out back of my Sheffield flat using the yarn from Jamieson’s, posting little posts on Instagram, building what I didn’t realise then, was an interest in the pattern and in my colour ways.   I began dreaming of living on an island 60degrees north.  (the full story unfolds here and you can read Aug – January of the book I wrote, if you join us on Patreon now – then each month will drop on the 1st of the month) and enjoyed how I mixed the  colours to sing.

It makes me really happy to see this pattern interpreted by knitters in their own colours, some of which are included here.  If you have knitted this pattern, please tag me in your posts so that I can see the results. 

Here is the little pattern.

Just think, you never know where knitting can take you. It is all interconnected and all a journey .

Thank you to everyone who supported me in 2023.

Tracey 🙂

textile, knitting or art?

Knitting, Art or just textiles?

Under a week after handing over this commissioned piece of knitting, I have had time to reflect.  I have a window of time to reconsider what I have made and why and what happened during the making and designing process and the outcome of what seems to some, to just be a knitted pullover.

The idea for this hand-knitted piece actually came from my thinking son because I was questioning the time involved in knitting and designing one off pieces. He suggested for me to consider intricately knitting something that I loved and to log every hour and minute spent making it.  This type of time is not commercial time but entirely creative, without speed, without a target.  So, to make a knitted piece in this way, with this idea behind it was the initiation that made it a project or a work of art; not just knitting and certainly not textiles.

A constant driving question of any maker is what is the value of time spent. I question time and the value of an hour of my time because, at 55 years old I may be running out of hours and what do I want to do with my one precious hour? is my hour of more value than, say, a 23 year old who, statistically, has more hours left to live than me.  If we knew how many hours left, what would we do with those hours? Knit?  

So, the act of writing, logging and recognising time spent whilst making became an underlying, fundamental principal of this knitted piece. I did not lie about time, did not hide time spent in the making process, did not adjust hours to fit ‘within time’ or an acceptable amount of time judged by others to take to knit this item and I did not exaggerate either.  I was wholly honest.

During the process there was no brief, or contract or even a binding conversation with the person who may or may not buy it, I made a Fair Isle pullover with a woman in mind.  A woman who I know respects hand-made items, understands art and creativity and supports makers.  And, I know that time is precious to her.  Of course, in the end, it is wearable. Win, win.

There was no design brief or discussion or demands or expectations.

Carte blanche. 

There was also no discussion of money due to the fact that this was not my driving force for the knitted project.  Notice, that this knitting has been called many things – a project, a hand-knitted piece, a piece of art but never just knitting or textiles. 

This whole project was a thought process – thinking about design, experimentation, research in practice, 2 years in an MA to research knitted lace, colours, heritage, Shetland-inspired memories, traditional patterns, blending colours, making mistakes and undoing mistakes, patterns I’ve previously knitted and why I wanted to weave those things into each stitch.   How can you sell that?  In a story? To a believer?  It’s an investment of time and detail.

In brief, the underlying principle was to create a work of art which encompassed understanding and mastery of the craft of knitting, which I have done for over 40 years now. To the untrained eye, this knitted piece is ‘textiles’ or ‘just knitting’ but,  to the thinking mind it is not.

So, I started. And unstarted. Designed and redesigned and felt my way through many, many, many hours of knitting.  Each hour was logged and sometimes what I was thinking, what I was feeling and my understanding of developing certain areas of the piece.  The work went everywhere with me and I knitted every day over 4 months. Yes, 4 months – sometimes at night watching things on iplayer. It went to café’s, babysitting, to Sheffield Institute of arts and on train journeys and to different cities but always I stayed true to the principle of logging the hours and to making every loop perfect.  I began to want to hold the work and get back to it.  It became a piece of wellbeing.

I became fascinated by thinking about how one colour sat next to another and where the pattern had come from and what memories the knitting drew on. I undid anything that I was not totally, absolutely happy with and the happiness came in the detail which fed back to the process of thinking.  The whole process took on a journey of its own.

The result is like a tightly woven carpet.

I am partly embarrassed about the hours I spent on this knitted piece and partly in awe of how much time I spent dedicated to something that a knitter would do in under half the time.  But, that knitting, from a pattern would be ‘just knitting’.  This piece came from scratch – from an idea and a bundle of over 50 colours of Shetland yarn.

On bank holiday Monday – the jewel-coloured surprise was ceremoniously and fittingly handed over