Felicity Ford (AKA
Felix) is the creative force behind KNITSONIK, a marvellous amalgam of knitting
and sound, and she is dedicated to WOOL – she has captured the sounds of every
stage of its production and use. With other collaborators she has run WOVEMBER,
a month long blog-based campaign and celebration of real wool, each November in
the past few years.
Now Felicity is putting
her considerable energies into creating a sourcebook for stranded colourwork.
It will set out her approach to interpreting ‘quotidian’ (every-day)
inspiration in stranded colourwork knitting. This fantastic resource for
knitters needs a little help to get from an inspired (and inspiring) idea to
reality, so Felicity has started a Kickstarter campaign.
You can find out how to
get involved here – in brief, for the book to be made, she needs people to
pledge a sum of money (small or large, its up to you). Depending on the sum
pledged, you will get a reward – all very enticing and many handmade by
Felicity herself. Full details are on the Kickstarter page.
All support for the project should go through the Kickstarter website,
as every pledge made through the campaign page goes towards the funding total.
Every pledge that is made through the Kickstarter website gets put into a
holding account until the campaign ends. Then - if the target is met or
exceeded - that money will go to Felicity so that she can fulfil the project
and MAKE THE BOOK! If the full target is not met, the money is returned
immediately to anyone who made a pledge.
I’ve already made my
pledge, and can’t wait to see the book when it is produced, so please have a
look at the Kickstarter page and consider pledging something yourself.
In the meantime I wanted to find out a bit more from Felicity so I asked her some questions – here they are with her answers:
When
did you first learn to knit? Who got you started?
I was about seven, and my
Gran taught me! She made a sweater for my Mum in a dusky pink mohair. I thought
this was the most beautiful thing ever
and wished to make something similar! We only managed a few rows of garter
stitch, however, and I was too scared to drop the stitch off the needle at the
end of each row! So the first thing I ever knitted was a lumpy trapezoid with
unintentional increases at each edge.
Was
your first project something that really got you motivated, or was it the
dreaded cotton dishcloth?(my first school project, age 7!!)
When I got back into
knitting in 2004 or so, I knitted a few different things - mainly scarves on big
needles - but when I joined the Oxford Bluestockings knitting group in Oxford
and discovered knitty.com, I got really motivated! I wanted to make the brown
lunch bag by Frances Swiecki; it's a hand-knitted, machine-felted bag
resembling a brown paper bag, and it spoke straight to my desire to celebrate the
everyday in yarn. Once I'd cast on, I could do nothing else until I'd finished!
I remember a manic, sleepless weekend spent churning out brown woolly stocking
stitch in the round followed by two exciting washing machine sessions. Huge
excitement about knitting has stayed with me since.
I
imagine you gather sources of inspiration on an almost daily basis - can you
tell us a bit about how you select something to base a knitted design on, and
how you manage the 'mental queue' of ideas?
Yes - EVERYTHING is
inspiring, which can be difficult to manage, as I can't put EVERYTHING in the
book! To manage content for The KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook, I
have narrowed my ideas down to a special list of long-term obsessions. 
I feel I cannot be the only knitter who has kept a skein of variegated yarn simply to admire its shades, and that other knitters must daydream on their way to work about how they could convert the journey into stitches! I want my book to speak to that shared impulse, and to inspire knitters to celebrate their favourite skein of yarn; the view on their commute; the distinctive architecture of their neighbourhood... The only way I can write with enthusiasm is to be genuinely passionate and knowledgeable in the examples I give. If my Kickstarter campaign is successful, I can draw on years of thinking about the case studies presented in the book. So to manage the mental queue of ideas, it's a case of asking myself "am I really excited about knitting and writing about this" and "will the knitter reading this at the end get something rich and useful out of it"? If the answer to either of those questions is no, the concept goes in the bin! I figure that if I am still excited about something after 5 or 6 years (the bricks, the socks, the A4074...) there must be something juicy to work with.
Once
you have swatched a particular colourwork design, where does it go next? Have
you already planned the final project (garment or whatever) or does that follow
the design of the colourwork?
Interesting question - I
actually work both ways. Sometimes - as with my Blaeberet hat - I map out the
maths of the garment first and then create my colourwork pattern to fit. However
lately I've been doing things the other way around; starting with the colours,
shades and patterns and then - once those are working - thinking about what
garments might suit my motifs. A lot can be gained by not focusing too much on
an end product; starting with colours and concepts allows you to grow ideas
organically, and any subsequent garments have to fit in with what you want to
knit rather than the other way around!
In The KNITSONIK
Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook, swatching is presented as a rich opportunity to
explore. Making swatches is about investing in ideas that will have a longer
life span than the length of time it takes to make a sweater or a hat; once
you've made a swatch, it should be an enduring and rich resource for all future
knitting projects! It's about building personal libraries of ideas, and the
swatches can be finished off beautifully,
like individual knitted works of art.
To be able to apply
ideas from swatches to garments you want to knit afterwards, flexibility in
numbers is key. If you use a broad enough range of stitch-widths and heights
amongst your ideas, you can ensure that some
aspect of your swatch may be applied to things you want to knit. I have had a
lot of fun applying my signature play/pause/record buttons motif to legwarmers
and my listening tunic using that logic, for example.
There
is a world of difference between giving someone precise instructions to follow
to produce a more-or-less identical product (for example, a knitting pattern
which specifies yarn, needle size, number of stitches and charts etc), and
encouraging people to follow their own inspiration to create something unique,
while giving them enough guidance. Can you say something about the balance
between directing and supporting creativity?
Yes, you are right!
Directions are excellent if what you want to end up with at the end is a very exact
thing, but - as you say - guiding people through a creative process of their
own where the end product is slightly less well-defined is something else
entirely.
I'm privileged to have
been either working as an artist, teaching art or music, or undertaking arts
research, for over 16 years. In that time I've learnt that creative projects
require a good deal of structure. You need systems to manage expansive ideas,
and to anchor you and provide confidence if things get wild! You also need to
be able to solve problems calmly. With this particular project, I started out
years ago wondering on my blog which skein of Wollmeise looked most like sloes
growing on blackthorns, and this led me to knitting and charting many
experimental things based on lichens on ash trees or bilberry bushes. Each time
I tried connecting an everyday context with my knitting, I ran into problems
and I solved them. The colours don't work together: why? That pattern is not working:
why? Solving problems as I went means I have developed a useful system, and I
run into far fewer problems when I try to translate the everyday world into
stranded colourwork than I did when I started out.
With The KNITSONIK
Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook, I see it as my job to share this system with
the knitter who wants to explore, but who - like me a few years ago - is not
sure where to start. I want knitters to not have to think about things like
"How many stitches should I cast on?" "How many colours should I
use?" "Which shade should I begin with?" etc. Because I have
thought about these things in some detail, the knitter who buys and uses the
book does not have to! You can instead concentrate on the really exciting stuff,
which is celebrating things you love in beautiful stranded colourwork.
In terms of offering
support, I think a key message is that whatever you want to knit, there is a way of doing it, and it is worth pursuing. We are all far too
quick to think our ideas are not good enough, and when something is tricksome
and complex like stranded colourwork, one is easily defeated when trying things
out. I hope the range of concepts presented in the book is broad enough to
demonstrate that NOTHING is too silly to turn into stranded knitting! Just now
I am working on a swatch based on a 1930s book about electricity; it's proving
super difficult but I am thoroughly enjoying the challenge and getting a lot of
material for the book out of it.
Once structure and
support are in place, there is no need to direct creativity too much. Instead
the focus can be on encouraging it and feeding the imagination. I hope that
gives some sense of how I hope to guide and support knitters who want to use my
book.
Is
there something in there about learning that 'making mistakes' is part of the
creative and learning process?
Absolutely! My many
stranded colourwork faux pas have been hugely instructive! I intend to discuss
these for the benefit of other knitters, and to show some of the clangers
involved in developing swatches for this book. I think this is useful, because
it inspires the idea that it's absolutely fine if everything doesn't turn out
perfectly every time. I find it hugely comforting to know that I can recover and
learn from Things Going Wrong, and the best thing I've gotten out of my long
arts career is that I no longer fear it.
In knitting we fear
mistakes because it is so time consuming to do, and lost time is heartbreaking.
It's awful when a project you have spent months on goes wrong. So I want to
make sure that things Go Right for knitters working out of my book as much as I
possibly can, but also to show what riches can be found When Things Go Wrong!
I love our knitting, it
is a beautiful practice and involves a great deal of skill and patience. I see
investing the extra yarn and time involved in making personalised colourwork
charts as a way of honouring the long work involved, and embedding a celebration
of the world around us in the things we make. Mistakes are necessary to that
process... as my wonderful Gran who taught me how to knit used to say -
"You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs", and so it is too
with knitting and wool.
Thank you Felix!!
I’m hugely flattered
that one of the photos Felicity has selected is of my Willow Pattern Fragments
– an idea which was sloshing around in my head for nearly two years before it
finally got charted and on to the knitting needles during Felicity’s Quotidian
Colourwork class (Shetland Wool Week 2013 – and planned for SWW this year
too!). The inspirations people brought with them to that class were so varied –
fruit and veg, views, fabric, stones and my Mum’s antique soup plate! Felicity
will share many of her inspirations in the book, with some examples in the
photos she has supplied for this post. What will your inspiration be?
If, like me you have a
habit of noticing all sorts of things in your surroundings that might be a good
starting point for a piece of knitting, but you need a system to help you get
started, Felicity’s book is just what you have been waiting for! So don’t
hesitate, the Kickstarter campaign deadline is not far away, so sign up today
and pledge what you can, so that you can have the book in your hands as soon as
possible.
Happy knitting!
(all photos in this post
copyright Felicity Ford, used with kind permission)
This
post is part of The KNITSONIK Blog Tour, which is going on throughout April and
involves Q&As with folks from all over the wool industry with Felicity Ford
about her current Kickstarter Campaign! The full list of destinations on the
tour, with links, is below:
04/04/2014 – Deborah Gray
http://perfectweatherforspinningandknitting.blogspot.co.uk/
AND
There is an interview with me in Brenda Dayne’s world famous Cast On podcast!
http://perfectweatherforspinningandknitting.blogspot.co.uk/
AND
There is an interview with me in Brenda Dayne’s world famous Cast On podcast!
15/04/2014 – The Shop at
The Old Fire Station
shopattheoldfirestation.blogspot.co.uk/
This blog post will coincide with a workshop I am leading there on this date entitled “FINDING THE FABRIC OF THE CITY”
shopattheoldfirestation.blogspot.co.uk/
This blog post will coincide with a workshop I am leading there on this date entitled “FINDING THE FABRIC OF THE CITY”
Viscose linen stretch printing
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