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.)

Recycled with Love

When I showed my friends Helen Smith’s super-cute, kitsch accessories from her Recycled with Love label there were squeals of “Oooooh!” and “I want them all!” Characters from our childhood adorn many of her handbags, with Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony and Alice in Wonderland all making an appearance, and pop art fruit and flower prints decorating her fun clutches and purses.

But these cheery images hold a deep-seated irony. Helen makes all her accessories from second-hand fabrics, and deliberately chooses familiar pop culture prints as a protest against mass-produced consumer goods.

After finishing her textile design degree Helen found a job working for a ‘fast fashion’distributor, where she was appalled at the poor quality of the garments, the wastefulness of packaging and the unnecessary transportation. “The world is far too full of mass-produced, faceless design and with the current planetary crisis we need to be aware that we can’t go on producing as much as we do and that we should be re-using perfectly good items,” she says.

Her interest in pop culture imagery goes back to her specialism in screen-printing and surface pattern whilst at fashion college. “My work was concerned with Americana and the mass-produced world,” she says. “I am heavily influenced by pop art – the bold colours and ironic statements always fascinated me.

“I love the idea of giving old fabrics new beginnings and this is what more of us need to be doing – sustainable design that is fresh and still fashion-forward. This whole ‘ikea generation’ needs to be outcast, set aside for a bespoke design future.”