It’s exciting to be here on the day of my 10 year design-iversary. Ten years ago, on this day I published my first pattern; Kinta Shawl.
I didn’t set out to be a knit designer, and am still quite amazed that I went ahead and published a pattern. Some encouragement from my LYS helped, thanks Zigo Zago! To my surprise copies of my pattern sold. I recovered from my shock and released my second pattern soon after and ten years and 218 designs later, here I am. Even though I didn’t plan to be a knit designer it seems circumstances conspired and I followed what was flowing for me at the time. I continued working in my other career for several years and was fortunate enough to be able to move into knit design full time and have been fully focused since.
Prior to designing knitting patterns, I worked as a Face and Body artist for around 15 years in total. I travelled throughout Australia and Internationally, teaching, judging and entering competitions, as well as painting for events and as performance – for example I spent two weeks in Hong Kong, each day I would paint a dancer inside a glass cube as part of a live performance troupe. I have taken down my Body Art website, however you can see my Facebook Body art page here to see some of what I got up to. Body Art involved creating headpieces and costume components to complement a look, which I would make at home, ahead of a show or event. While I love painting people and the adventures that involved, my happy place has always been crafting at home, which is one of the reasons knit design is so perfect for me.
Creating with yarn has been a completely different experience to that of painting and interestingly I feel I’m able to be even more expressive in this craft. Working with amazing yarn has been one of the biggest joys too.
The best part has been connecting with you. I feel so grateful for your support and encouragement of me and my business. To create patterns that you want to knit and make your own is, I don’t even know what to say – everything comes out kind of trite, but truly, I am honoured when you knit my designs. Not to mention the amazing community we have created in the “Ambah” Ravelry group, I get pretty mushy thinking about the generous, loving and supportive connections that occur there and that stretches beyond to the other spaces online and IRL when I have had the opportunity to meet some of you in the world. I am saddened that not everyone can join us in Ravelry and have been working to provide other spaces for us to connect too.
This is a much longer message than I originally had in my mind when I sat down to write this today. I could ramble on for pages here, however I’ll edit myself and keep this from becoming a novel!
Suffice to say, I am proud and truly grateful for the last 10 years and so, SO excited for the next ten, in some ways I feel like I’ve just begun and can’t wait to continue exploring knit design, connecting with our wonderful knit community and what flows from this. I hope you’ll continue to join me on this adventure.
Today I have something old and something new to share, and to celebrate my design-iversary all of my patterns in both my Ravelry and Etsy stores are currently 30% off through February 28, no code needed – just add to your cart to see the new price.
First up, something new; published today is the Hakea Hood.
Inspired by the gorgeous crochet hoods I’ve been seeing, I wanted to create a fun knit version with lots of colour options. This is a perfect scraptastic project, I used both fingering weight held double and DK weight leftovers for my Hakea Hood.
Or keep it simple with two colours – also perfect for colour-changing yarn. I love that it doubles as a cowl too, such a handy accessory to have for that extra warmth year-round. We are experiencing a very chilly summer here this year and this would be a great little extra warmth on the chilly, windy mornings.
Hakea Hood is a fun way to play with colour and add a little something extra to your wardrobe. The contrasting slip stitch sections are easy to work; a single colour per round produces dramatic results.
Something old is my very first pattern, Kinta – where it all began.
I updated this pattern to my current style and layout earlier this year and was excited to find that on revisiting it, I still love it! I knit several of these and wore them all regularly – particularly the linen version during warmer weather. Perfect for a single skein of yarn, Kinta can also be sized up and knit with 2 skeins. I used a gradient yarn for my larger version with lovely results.
