Colours of Edinburgh at EYF

Following on from my earlier post, I thought you might like to see some of the beautiful knitting done in my Colours of Edinburgh workshops at EYF. This is a slightly different class from Quotidian Colourwork, as I’ve designed this workshop to speak directly to the wondrous geographic context of Edinburgh, and attendees get photos and a pre-selected palette from which to work rather than using their own inspiration sources. I designed this class firstly to help address how a vast landscape can be edited down into a manageable source of inspiration, and secondly to celebrate that EYF takes place IN EDINBURGH!

I’m really grateful to my friend Gordon Anderson for the photos we use in Colours of Edinburgh, and for introducing me to Arthur’s Seat – my favourite place to go in Edinburgh, and one of the sources of the stone used to build (and colour) that city. Thank you, Gordon!

Each class begins with looking at the photos and defining one element for exploration. In my notes for my first class on Thursday I have scribbled things like “green and orange in a triangle” “stone with a ghost in it” “speck with a particularly pleasing colour combo” “lichens with a graphic yellow line standing out” “yellow and orange speckles, BIG BLOBS” “hard shapes against soft pinks” and other details that sang from Arthur’s Seat to the knitterly instincts of the workshop group…

For the second workshop, I have written “moss light shade” “skyline and shadows” “graded shading” “GREEN plants” “spikiness of grass gingerbread to green transition” “geometric form” and “lichen circle and black gashes” among other notes…

(keen-eyed spotters will note that this is a very different interpretation of the same grassy inspiration source shown from the earlier class)

(I love the refinement of Yvonne’s design here; she was drawn to the glowing orange tips of the moss… in her first design the shading evoked the colours of this, but the shape felt too straight and blocky… in her second iteration, the pattern has a more slender, diagonal shape that more accurately communicates the delicacy of the original inspiration)

I really, really love the ways in which comrades at Colours of Edinburgh classes parsed the textures, surfaces and details of Arthur’s Seat into stranded colourwork, and the different ways in which knitters have individually transposed lichens, rocks, geology and light into unique designs… I think this class in particular shows how differently each of us views the world. Thanks for your willingness to adventure into knitting the landscape together, and for bringing such a variety of knitterly perspectives to this special place. Apologies for the sometimes blurry photos but hopefully the collection here gives a tiny glimpse of the joy we had exploring THE COLOURS OF EDINBURGH!

YOURS IN ROCKS AND MOSS, FX