Just popping in to share two things.
1. my friends at John Arbon Textiles are having a Mill Open Weekend (MOW) in just over a fortnight, woohoo!
2. I will be giving a workshop as part of this, and also a talk.
These are my only face-to-face teaching and public-speaking engagements of 2022 and I am really excited. Like most of us, I’ve missed seeing people In Real Life these past few years. It will be amazing to share time, space and ideas with other makers, and to have the chance to huff wool fumes together.
My workshop for the MOW is based on the design I’ve created for the forthcoming eBook, KNITSONIK & Friends: Colour to Knit. Flombre – a portmanteau of Floral and Ombre – recolours and reimagines the motif from my previous design, Efflorescent: Cherry Blossom Edition. The repurposed motif is used for a matching accessory set that incorporates ideas I’ve been exploring around gradients and ombre colour-sequences. This work is fuelled in no small part by the enticing creative possibilities offered by John Arbon Textiles’ KBN yarn range and this design is one of several in which I have sought to make the most of this range and how its yarns are made.
Relatedly, the talk I’m giving speaks to creative strategies for Playing with Colour:
Starting with the solace that a shade-card provided when working on my doctoral thesis, traveling through two research trips (to Shetland and Estonia), and the pages of two self-published books, this talk is a journey. Along the way lie informative mistakes, inspiring ugly knitting, and some unexpected treasures – all of which are equally necessary to developing and honing our understanding of colours and their endlessly fascinating and sometimes unpredictable interactions.
OVERJOYED – NOT OVERWHELMED! includes almost no colour theory and no rules about what goes with what. Instead, this talk celebrates curiosity, mistake-making, the richness of creative process, and the value of uncertainty when we make things. There’ll be ideas for you to use and explore yourself; samples and swatches for you to see; and an informal Q&A at the end.
See you there?