London’s top craft spots

Today’s London Paper has a double page feature on the city’s craft scene. If you’re a better person than me and never pick the rag up out of protest at its wateful use of paper, or because you don’t care what Peaches Geldof did in Bungalow 8 last night, then I salute you and shall reward you with a summing-up of its contents.

The Papered Parlour opens in Clapham this Saturday 2 May, and hopes to bring a bit of culture and creativity to an area best known for chain bars and Australian youths in bad loafers. Acting us a creative community hub, there’s a cafe and studio where anyone can drop in for a cup of tea, a natter and – hopefully – some artistic skill-sharing. There will also be exhibitions, performance space for hire and classes on everything from screen-printing to jewellery making. Plus they sell some exquisite-looking cupcakes. It sounds so fabulous that I might just brave the walk down Clapham High Street to get there, which says a lot.

The Make Lounge aims to provide ‘contemporary craft workshops with a stylish, social twist’, and they have a brilliant range of niche workshops on offer including A-line skirt making and a ‘zipper clinic’ (which I could definitely do with popping along to…). They also offer bespoke craft parties for you and friends, although be prepared to recevive handmade presents from all your guests if you throw one for your birthday – fine when they’re good crafters, but slightly rubbish when they’re not.

I Knit, based in Waterloo, is an absolute haven for all yarn junkies. Browse the extensive collection of quality wool, take one of their classes to brush up on your needle skills and pop along to their knit groups (every wednesday and thursday) for some yarn-bonding sessions. Also sign up their online newsletter for all knit-related goings-on.

Candid Arts is a slightly more high-brow institution, and primarily acts as an exhibition and education centre, but has an extensive range of art courses for those wishing to expand their skills beyond those GCSE paint splatters you did ten years ago. Plus there’s singing and music lessons – in a definitely non-x-factor-ish way.

Learning to knit

I’ve made it my mission to master the craft of knitting. Plenty of people have been raving to me about what a great stress-buster and creative outlet it is, and like the idea being able to make stuff whilst watching TV or sitting on the train – bit difficult to do that with a sewing machine. And it’s sustainable – make something from scratch, grow bored of it, unpick it, knit it into something new…

I’m not sure if I have the patience to create those elaborate project pieces women spend months working on - not when I’m used to running things up on the sewing machine in five minutes. But I quite fancy making lots of little trinkets like these, and stringing them around my room like bunting.

Knitting for a hobby is as cheap or expensive as you want it to be - you can splash out on luxury wools, or you could unpick old charity shop jumpers and re-knit them into fabulous new creations.

There’s heaps of knitting clubs out there too – most famously, the global phenomenon that is stich’n'bitch groups. We have one in Cardiff, but instead I’ve been going to a local club called yarn’n'yarn as the attendees are younger and the knitting they embark on less complicated! Have a look-out for different groups in your area as they might not all be to your tastes.

The first thing you’ll need to learn is how to cast-on, i.e. actually get the wool on to the damn needle. If you want to master the basics before joining a club, or just want to learn at home, there are some great tutorial videos on YouTube. I particulalry like this casting-on video, although the sound is a little odd at the beginning.

The user also has a good ‘basic stitch’ video:

Who knows, perfect the art and you could one day be creating statements like this:

(First photo from glittyknittykitty, shared under a creative commons licence. Second photo by Marianne Jørgensen.)