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.
