A year of KNITSONIK

Greetings, Comrades, and Happy Holidays!

Whatever your faith or philosophy, I sincerely hope that the depths of winter have afforded you quiet moments for reflection and joyous ones in which to party too; and that you are well and happy and enjoying a fine break with loved ones.

Things at KNITSONIK HQ are a little bit busy just now because in just under a month, myself and no. 1 comrade Mark are getting married.

Nevertheless, I find it is important around this time of year to take a breath to think about the year that has almost passed, the year that is to come, and the hopes, dreams and projects that lie ahead.

2016 was a good year. Best of all, Mark and I got engaged.

In other good news, I took delivery of the 3rd print run of the KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook and I founded the KNITSONIK YouTube channel. I also began researching and practicing the best ways to produce an amazing online school, and I produced a major project for the Charles Dickens Museum, celebrating the life and times of Catherine Dickens. Together with my good comrade Louise, I also worked on what I think turned out to be one of our finest Wovembers.

However, there were many more things I had hoped to do in 2016 that I was not able to manage. Apart from a series of extremely depressing world and political events that I won’t go into here, it was a difficult year because ill health somewhat slowed me down. If you’ve ever had a serious long-term health condition you’ll know how frustrating it is when your body can’t keep up with your mind, and I confess that at times I’ve felt rather down and frustrated – especially when arthritis has wrecked my hands, or when drugs to manage it have wrecked my head.

I’m planning a more sustainable 2017 and things are hopefully on the up with new drugs and regimes, so to kick-start a positive slide into 2017, I thought I’d do some posts that celebrate some of the good things that happened in 2016; the things I managed and the things I did.

Today’s celebration is all about stranded colourwork produced using The KNITSONIK System: a year of KNITSONIK, if you will.

January was the Silchester mittsalong, in which many wondrous buddies from the KNITSONIK Ravelry group took part; here are my mitts in progress!

February involved a wonderful weekend of teaching at Purlescence with my good friend Brenda Dayne. I taught my Quotidian Colourwork class, and Brenda taught her Bespoke Yokes class. Many amazing swatches were produced in the course of the weekend, including Sue’s beautiful Istanbul tile inspired colourwork pictured above; I just love the way that Sue has translated her inspiration source into stranded colourwork there.

March was all about knitting my Missy Elliott Sweater in time to wear it to the magnificent Edinburgh Yarn Festival at which I was teaching.

@MissyElliott I have designed and knitted a sweater that celebrates you! #massivefangirl Thank you for your music! pic.twitter.com/R2ExLsHXkk

— Felicity Ford (@knitsonik) March 19, 2016

As well as prancing around in my giant woolly eulogy to the amazing Missy Elliott, I launched a new class at Edinburgh Yarn Festival in 2016 called Colours of Edinburgh. Colours of Edinburgh celebrates the colours of the beautiful landscape around Arthur’s Seat, and comrades who came to this class explored how to translate rocks, moss, grass, sky and stone into glorious stranded colourwork; I am teaching it again in 2017 and am already looking forward to it.

At the Edinburgh Yarn Festival I also met up with many buddies from Shetland who were there representing Shetland Wool Week and launching Crofthoose Hat – the signature design from this year’s patron, Ella Gordon. I knitted one up in April, theming the colours to the bricks of our wee home here: The Red House.

In May my soundpieces launched at the Charles Dickens Museum, as part of their wonderful exhibition: The Other Dickens, Discovering Catherine. One of the installations featured the very tiny sounds of making and knitting, and was presented within a sewing basket. I examined some of Catherine’s needlework to pick shades of Appletons Crewel Wool from which to knit covers for the little speakers, and you had to hold them to your ears to hear the tiny sounds.

In June, many comrades (including me) finished projects produced during the spring 2016 Magnolia mittsalong. In this mittsalong, myself and other comrades knitted KNITSONIK fingerless mitts using Magnolia flowers as our inspiration source. You can see some examples in this video produced for my YouTube channel and celebrating our collective creative investigations of magnolia blossoms.

I have a bit of a *thing* about polka dots and in July, I was obsessed with knitting polka dots in natural shades of wool from a dear friend’s flock of sheep. This design is languishing but I keep looking at its pleasing dottiness and I think we are not done yet, me and the dots…

…in August I began swatching for a new design for Old Maiden Aunt’s new book: Coming Home. My design takes its inspiration from the glorious shades of the Old Maiden Aunt yarn collection, and the flora that line the paths of the West Highland Way. Its name – Wild Mountain Time – refers to a very jolly walking holiday I had there with lovely Mark in 2009. I wrote about this on Lilith’s blog and you can see how much fun I had experimenting with the new-to-me palette of her glorious 4-ply Shetland yarn in August and September 2016.

In October, stricken with FOMO and not able to attend Shetland Wool Week, I hosted my own celebrations here in the South, of which a long-distance #knitsonikmittsalong with a Shetland-theme was a key part. Knitters bought kits from my friends at Jamieson & Smith and Purlescence and we made mitts inspired either by the Croft House Museum, or by the knitting sheaths held in the Shetland Museum and Archives.

In November, some dear friends of mine got married and I made them matching his’n’his hats. I used colours inspired by the European Union – Gold and Blue – whose freedom of movement laws enabled their love to flourish, and I charted two wee figures that are extremely simplified portraits of these glorious men. The little charts top and bottom of the hats are an abstraction of their initials, and the hats are complimentary opposites – just like their wearers.

This December I have continued on the theme of stranded colourwork for weddings, but this time the knitting is for me. It’s taken me a while to settle on a design, but in the end the gauntlets I shall wear when me and Mark are wed will be like all my other mitts: swatches that celebrate new ideas as they progress; I think that is a good omen for a marriage, no?

I hope you have enjoyed this retrospective of a year of KNITSONIK and will see you again very shortly!
YOURS IN CONTEMPLATION,
FX