Create your Mark – clairemaloney

16th Jul 2020

Field Reflection

Field Reflection: Field into Subject

The Natural Dyeing Module was life changing for me. I have knitted since I was 5 or 6 and being able to colour my own yarn by means of other favourite pastimes – gardening & walking/foraging is a dream come true. Learning how to make dye baths and mordant fabric so that the dyes would be colourfast are definitely skills I will be using for the rest of my life.

The Moving the Museum module tested my research and idea development skills to the limit, and whilst it was a very successful module for me, it gave me clarity on where I saw my future. This module ran alongside the beginning of the dissertation proposal, where we were required to watch a Simon Sinek TED Talk which centred on the importance of authenticity. I realised that the research and idea development I was putting into the project didn’t feel authentic to me and initiated much soul searching.

For my final project in Natural Dyeing I made a sample book of all the fabric and yarn dyeing experiments we had done, along with notes and recipes for future reference. This has been a great source of information and inspiration in my Subject module, and I have and will continue to add recipes, samples and notes as I continue my botanical dyeing of yarns. It is surprising the difference the fibre makes to the final colours achieved, and how the colours can be altered with different metals or acid/alkaline solutions.

In Moving the Museum I made a collection of 9 sea slugs in different materials such as ceramic, paper and yarn, showcasing my Maker perspective on the brief. This was a response to the sea slug exhibition in the Natural History exhibit and was a play on the difference between the curation of Art and Natural History in the museum. How we see an exhibit is manipulated by its curation – by placing the sea slugs in perspex boxes and placing them on a plinth we question whether they are art or natural history – we can’t touch them, but are invited to view them through lenses placed on top of the boxes – representing the manipulated viewpoint.

I learned a lot about myself during these projects. I learned why I make. I make because it is therapeutic and helps me deal with everyday life. I struggled with the Fine Art perspective as I didn’t think I had a message that I was passionate about to put out there, but I found I do – I want to pass on the mindfulness, grounding and relief from stress and anxiety that yarn crafts bring to me. By designing knitting patterns for others to follow, I can also fulfil my own creative needs as well as my personal need to follow (my own) instructions to make things skilfully. I have learned that crafts, including yarn crafts such as dyeing, knitting and crocheting are not inferior to art.

My plan now is to design knitting patterns inspired by the places I walk, providing a map of the walk that inspired the design. Walking is also known to help with mental health. The designs will be sold globally online as digital downloads via Ravelry – a specific platform for yarn crafters. When large gatherings of people are safe again, and yarn festivals such as Wonderwool Wales and Edinburgh Yarn Festival can take place once more, I shall botanically dye yarn to make up kits to sell with my patterns. The “zine” I have designed will be on my stall for people to read about my philosophy and ethos, together with a free pattern and walking route.

9th Jul 202017th Jul 2020

Final pattern design

One of my favourite places to go walking is the Elan Valley. I particularly love going on a day when the water in the reservoirs are calm and reflect the hills like mirrors. I took this photo as my inspiration.

The colours in the photo are a bit dull, so I dyed yarns to make it more colourful, going with a palette suitable for sunset on a warm autumn evening.

I sketched out an abstracted image roughly based on the inspiration photo on graph paper for the pattern and worked out how many stitches and rows I would need to create a square big enough to cover a 30cm X 30cm square. On any ball of yarn there is a guide which tells you how many stitches and rows of yarn are required to make a 10cm X 10cm Swatch using a certain sized needle. You can then work out from this the number of stitches and rows you will need for you projects measurements.

This knitting method is called “intarsia”. This means that you knit the different colours in blocks, working with several mini balls of wool at once. There are other ways of knitting with more than one Colour such as fair isle or stranded knitting but these are more suitable for work where there are only a few colours per row and the pattern is small, so you are only knitting a few stitches of each colour at a time. For big blocks of colour like this design, intarsia is the most suitable colourwork method.

I was delighted with the finished design, mainly because of how the variegated yarns had worked in the sky. I had consciously made the lengths of colour quite long to achieve this look. You can see the difference in this piece compared to the indigo yarn in the bridge design which had much shorter lengths of colour. Blocking once again made a huge difference – it is difficult to achieve a regular tension with intarsia and my stitches looked very untidy, but blocking stretched them all into a much more even tension.

The final image for the pattern. This is how I would have displayed my final work in the exhibition – I would have brought in a wicker chair and plants, a peg board on the wall with skeins of my hand dyed yarn hanging from them and a walking map. A walking stick would be propped against the chair. A side table to the left with my yarn swift clamped to it and yarn wound on it. Another side table to the right with a vase of flowers that can be used for dyeing – whatever I could forage that was in season and next to it a pile of my zines, including details of how to access the pattern for free via Ravelry, for people to read and take with them if they wanted.

19th Jun 202017th Jul 2020

Unsuccessful Pattern design

Whilst playing with the indigo dye trying to achieve a sky blue, I dyed yarn that was too dark for my intended design. Whilst looking at this yarn, another design idea came to mind.

I had been looking at my photos of Elan Valley reservoirs and there was one of a bridge reflected in the water. I had been thinking that the bridge and its reflection would make a great crochet motif.

Whilst I was happy with it, I couldn’t think of a use for it – too narrow and holey for a scarf or garment. Perhaps a table runner? I then thought by knitting a background I could make a cushion cover.

I realised that the variegated yarn was too close a colour to the solid colour of the crochet work for the stitchwort to be visible, so I thought by putting a white background behind and having the variegated yarn top and bottom this might work better.

I thought it would be interesting to use a stocking stitch at the top for the sky (a neat, smooth stitch like t-shirt fabric) but then use garter stitch (a rippled bumpy stitch) at the bottom to represent the distorted reflection of the sky in rippling water.

Components finished. Note that the different stitches have different properties – the garter stitch remains flat but stocking stitch curls at the edges horribly! This can be corrected by blocking – a process that is often skipped but should always be done upon finished a project. It is the difference between something looking crudely home made and skillfully hand crafted and makes a world of difference to the finished piece.

Blocking: first, soak the items in hand hot warm water ( too hot or cold and the yarn will seize, you will damage the fibres and the piece will shrink!) Leave to soak for at least half an hour.

On a foam blocking mat ( or folder towel if you don’t have one), smooth out the piece and pin it to the size required. Because the fibres are soaked and malleable, it is possible to adjust the size slightly at this point if required. This is especially useful if making something that has to be a specific size and perhaps your tension was a little loose or tight so needs adjusting by a cm or 2 – not if you started knitting something when you were a size 10 but by the time you have finished are a size 16, or if you have made jumper sleeves 12 inches too long – I speak from experience 🤣

I was a bit disappointed with the final piece. The variegated yarn was too thin – a thicker yarn would have emphasised the difference in the stocking and garter stitches and I didn’t like the white behind the bridge. The overall image was a little boring too – it wasn’t something I would want on a sofa. Due to the time restraints of the module I decided to scrap this design and get on with my original design. I may revisit this another time to see if I can resolve my issues with it.

14th May 202017th Jul 2020

Natural Dyeing

Skeining yarn from a ball using a swift.

Avocado dye extracted, waste seived out, skeined and mordanted wool placed in residual dye bath and heated to 80 degrees for 2 hours

Avocado dyed yarn skeins drying in the sun

Dried avocado dyed yarn twists alongside onion skin dyed yarn and a variegated onion skin, daffodil and turmeric dyed yarn

Gathering cow parsley for the dye bath – new, experimental dye! Saw an Instagram post of fabric dyed with cow parsley so googled dye bath recipe. Had to be careful I was picking cow parsley, not hemlock or giant hogweed as they are both toxic and dangerous. Also cleared the walking path while I was at it – only taking what was overgrowing the public right of way.

Cow parsley flowers, stalks and leaves in the dye pot

Cow parsley yarn. My favourite colour and very strong, fast colour. Had issues with turmeric dye fading but this doesn’t.

An experiment with black elder leaves and flowers – couldn’t find a recipe but thought the leaves looked such a strong colour it might be worth trying!

Black elder produced very subtle pinkish beige shades. Tried here on mordanted cotton, alpaca and sheeps wool. Wool took more pigment than the others. Maybe need more foliage – will try again when I prune it later in the year after I have tried dyeing with the berries.

Range of yarns dyed to suit my pattern design. L-R Indigo with turmeric (turmeric faded so later overdyed with cow parsley which wasn’t as bright but far more stable.), Indigo, variegated indigo and logwood, logwood, variegated logwood and avocado, avocado, onion skin, daffodil and turmeric (replaced with cow parsley for final design as I preferred the colour and the turmeric wasn’t stable) and finally onion skin.

Indigo yarn. Indigo dye was considerably more complicated than plant and waste dye, but magical! The yarn turns green in the pot then turns blue as it reacts with oxygen when you expose it to the air. Difficult to obtain sky blue as it’s such a strong pigment. I found 4 tbsp of dye from the final dye bath added to 2 litres of warm water (i.e. VERY diluted!) With a quick dunk (approx 1 minute rather than the usual 40 mins!) Achieved a successful sky blue.

1st Apr 202015th Jul 2020

A word on the global and local knitting community in the Coronavirus lockdown

As the world has gone into lockdown, I notice that my pattern sales on Ravelry have increased quite dramatically – in April I have sold approximately 4 times what I would normally. People have more time to indulge in hobbies and it’s also good for mental health – no time to worry about the future of the world when you’re counting stitches!

I have also noticed several free knitalong groups have started up by well known pattern designers like Arne & Carlos:

Arne and Carlos Quarantine Knitting Kal

I joined in for a while but then found I didn’t really have time with work and my dissertation proposal!

arne & carlos

Others such as Dee Hardwick (a designer for Rowan Yarns) also shared free patterns.

My local yarn shop The Wool Croft held “knit and natter” groups in the Angel Hotel every Wednesday where about 20 of us would take our current project along and sit in the lobby with a cocktail or a cup of tea and sit and chat while we worked. As this had to be stopped, they held zoom meetings every Wednesday instead & started new ones on a Sunday afternoon & Monday evening too. Ginevra (the owner) also made sure everyones yarn stashes and crafting needs were maintained as she set up online sales and mail order to keep her customers busy.

Wool Croft Zoom

Friends started asking me where the best online tutorials were for beginners knitting and crochet, Wool Warehouse had to stop taking orders for 2 weeks so they could catch up with the backlog…the world went knitting crazy for the first month of lockdown! Long may it continue.

31st Mar 20201st Apr 2020

Create your Mark – the one interrupted by Coronavirus!

I guess I had better start writing up what I have been doing over the last couple of months – better late than never!

At the beginning of the module I wasn’t in a good place mentally – I had been doing a lot of soul searching with regards to who I am, what I am about, what my beliefs are, why I make and what I want my practice to be as a maker.

I came to the conclusion that I make as an antidote to the modern pace of life – it calms me, heals me, puts things back into perspective and makes me feel connected to the planet rather than lost in a whirlwind of crazy senseless modern life. I want to pass that feeling on. Most people do that by teaching, but I am not a people person, so returning to knitting and crochet pattern design makes sense to me because I am not selling a finished item – I am selling the opportunity to the purchaser to make and experience these things for themselves.

For my dissertation I will be writing a business plan covering my intention to design and sell locally inspired patterns on Ravelry (a forum specifically for this and where I have already established myself as a designer). I also intend to naturally dye my own yarns to make up kits with my locally inspired designs which I will sell at myriad knit/crochet/yarn events across the country, perhaps the world! I would like to design a range of ceramic ware to compliment my designs and kits which I will also sell at these events and online. I need to re-brand as my Claire-Clutterbug brand is a little outdated and doesn’t suit my business plans moving forward.

https://www.ravelry.com/stores/claire-clutterbug

This is obviously all far too much to cover in the Create your Mark module. I had intended to concentrate on the ceramic element, however the impact of Coronavirus/Covid 19 has meant that I don’t have access to the kilns. As such, I have decided to design a pattern using yarn I have dyed myself using natural plant dyes.

Coronavirus/Covid19 interrupted play around week 4 for me and 5 for everyone else as uni closed and access to workshops was no longer possible. As my Dad has terminal lung cancer, I took the social distancing/self isolating seriously and did this a week before it was compulsory.

I am very lucky as it hasn’t affected my or my husband’s ability to work and so it hasn’t affected our income. To be honest it’s lovely being able to spend so much time with the people I love doing the things I love – gardening, knitting, reading. I appreciate others are probably struggling with not being able to see friends, partners and family, losing their jobs and income, suffering anxiety and fear.

I am scared. My husband and I both have underlying health problems so would likely have more serious effects should we catch the virus, however my Dad is my main concern as he is obviously very vulnerable. Having discussed the isks with both Mum and Dad, we concluded he wouldn’t cope mentally and emotionally if I didn’t visit every day, so I am continuing daily visits.

Again, making and appreciating the small things every day like sitting in the sun, new flowers blooming in the garden, listening to birdsong, eating lovely food are seeing me through – I have learned to take each day/moment as it comes since dad’s diagnosis which has stood me in good stead to weather the Coronavirus/Covid19 storm.