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The Makes We Make Again And Again

Posted on by Eva Christie

Forming a carefully curated library of timeless patterns is as essential as building up your own yarn collection.   The patterns that make up my own tend to be those that first come to mind when I’m thinking about gift knitting, and more often than not, they are also the perfect solution to that age old question, “what can I make with this single hand dyed skein that I couldn’t do without?”

I went in search of a classic fingering weight ribbed hat to cast on ahead of my long journey on the Megabus to Yarningham last July and found ‘Ribbed Toque #120’ by Michelle Porter (Fondle Designs.)  Then I had a good rummage in my yarn collection before picking out a skein of ‘You Can’t Seee Meee’ by Lime & Violet.  Completed long after I made it home, and following my turn to catch The Virus, it’s snug and ready for the chilly Scottish winter ahead:

 

 

Since that time I’ve made one for My Favourite Person, who needs functional garments as he works in all weathers all year round.  His was made from a cone of JC Rennie Shetland Bluestone which I found in a local charity shop for the princely sum of 50p!

 

 

But I didn’t stop there.  My third – and maybe not – final version of the year is this one in ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ by BuzzinYarns, which will be given to a friend as a winter gift alongside a pre-loved book next month.

 

 

For more about the pattern

Ribbed Toque #120 by Michelle Porter is available free* from LoveCrafts here:  ribbed-toque

 

For more about buzzinyarns

BuzzinYarns is Karen, a Scottish yarn dyer, and recipient of the Spirit of the Festival Award at the 2022 Perth Festival of Yarn.  You can find her current collections here:  buzzinyarns

 

Our Collab Club

Posted on by Eva Christie

The Perth Collab Club – a monthly yarn club – was originally formed at the end of 2020 as a way of our festival working together and continuing to lift up indie dyers in our community when so much still remained uncertain with the pandemic and Brexit looming.  We settled on a ‘Brighter Days’ theme, reached out to 12 different dyers so we could feature 1 a month, and like most things Perth, it was planned to be a one-off project.

The response to our Collab Club was so enthusiastic that we decided to do it all again with 12 different dyers in 2022 – and a new theme – Hit Parade.  Why Hit Parade?  Music has always been an extremely important part of my life.  It’s what moved me at 17 from the West Coast of Scotland to Perth, where I, armed with my saxophone, came to get my degree in Popular Music Performance.

Music provides the soundtrack to our lives.  We all remember what was playing in the background at key moments.  We are sung lullabies to soothe us as babes; couples have “their song.”  Buying a record and taking it home for the first play was always an event in itself.  Having saved up pocket money and – latterly – wages from babysitting and a paper round – there was not much more exciting as a teenager than to greedily take in every little detail of the cover art – and if you were lucky the gatefold too – before pouring over the lyric sheets.

Today we share the details for our 2023 Collab Club, but before we do that Pop-Pickers, we thought we’d take a moment and run down all the skeins that made up our virtual jukebox this year:

 

 

FibrePunk kicked us off in January with ‘Post’ by Björk, followed in February by Quack Yarn with ‘Insomniac’ by Green Day, and Knit Me Sane’s ‘Oh, Billy Brown!” by Mika in March.

 

 

April featured Giddy Yarns with ‘The Chances of Anything Coming from Mars are a Million to One’ from The War of the Worlds by Jeff Wayne, followed in May with BuzzinYarns and ‘Kind’ by Stereophonics, and Curated Yarn Co’s ‘Purple Rain’ by Prince and the Revolution in June.

 

 

In July we had Bow Fiddle Yarns with ‘Hysteria’ by Def Leppard, Mad Madam Mel with ‘Hounds of Love’ by Kate Bush in August, and Edelweiss Fibres chose ‘Hot Fuss’ by The Killers for September.

 

 

Then to bring us up to date we’ve had AMOyarn’s ‘Like a Bat Out of Hell’ by Meat Loaf in October, ‘NOW! That’s What I Call…’ from the compilation series by Weku Yarn for November, and to close out the year Atthis Yarns and ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham!  (pre-orders are still open for this one here:  perth-collab-club

If you came to Perth Festival of Yarn in September then you may have seen the display jukebox that My Favourite Person built as a surprise, and because he too loved seeing how all the dyers translated their inspiration over the year.

 

 

When thinking about what we should do for 2023 there was no doubt in my mind that we should keep this theme for a while longer; so I present to all of you – Hit Parade Vol.2 featuring the following artists:

 

 

Sealy MacWheely, Bobble & Badger Yarns, James Makes Yarn, Dystopic Fibre, WooSheeps, YarnTings, Hey Mama Yarns, Blue Fern Yarns, Big Tree Yarns, Nervus Fibre, Flyy Dyed, and Nightingale Knits.