Making Light

Hello! Those of you who have been part of our Making Light club might like to know that the book is now at the printers (hurrah). Perhaps you’d like to see the cover?

And the back?

The whole team has put a lot of creative energy into this project, and I think that is apparent in the end result, from Tom’s photographs to a collection, which I really enjoyed designing, knitting, and styling. You’ll find fourteen patterns in the book:

This outdoor sweater with a useful pocket . . .

. . . and cosy divided cowl . . .

. . . both feature the same twisted stitch motif, with a satisfying woven texture.

I combined straightforward openwork with structure in Dorchas / Solas . . .

. . . and Dirken, its accompanying quick-to-knit matchy-matchy hat. . . .

. . . while bringing colour and lace together in Light Waves . . .

. . . and Fleero

. . . flipping a small, striped shawl right-way-up and upside-down.

I love working with lace and texture, but stranded colourwork is definitely my thing, and in this collection I really took myself to two-tone town.

With a comfortable allover hoody and a pair of cosy, stranded slippers . . .

inspired by the cold night sky.

. . . while with the Blue Monk gansey and Monk’s Dream mittens . . .

. . . I loved celebrating the innovative melodic structures of Theolonius Monk (one of my all-time favourite musician-composers).

I had such fun exploring the potential of a simple, diamond-shaped motif with a single, broken line . . .

. . .that I created three different designs with it.

. . . and also included one of my favourite-ever yoke designs, with its beautifully classic Selbu motif, as a final colourwork bonus.

In the Making Light collection, I set myself the general challenge of celebrating darkness, and particularly the qualities of darker yarn shades, whose rich, deep, complex colours can feel somewhat under-appreciated in the predictable sea of beige, ecru and putty, whose easy-to-photograph palette still dominates the contemporary knit (and fashion) landscape.

I created many of these designs especially to highlight Choffer – our rich, deep chocolate-y brown shade of Ooskit, and enjoyed coming up with combinations in the styling to really show the colour off. The contrast with the dusky blue cords I’m wearing in the Clanjamfrie shoot is one of my personal favourites . . .

. . .as is the orange pop of KC’s barrel pants, hat, instax camera and bold lipstick against Choffer’s deep, dark brown – which, worn this way, feels (I think) more 2025 than 1972.

Tom has done a wonderful job with Making Light’s photography, and really embraced its challenges, from rising before dawn to capture the colours of the sunrise . . .

. . . to heading out at all hours of day and night to photograph the moon . . .

. . . waves . .

and planets.

We’ve included several of Tom’s Making Light images in the book, which will (somewhat unbelievably) be our 28th independently published title! All of us at KDD love books and love making books – beautiful, thoughtful, creative books – which in a media landscape dominated by AI slop, short-form video, and general assumptions of literacy’s terminal decline, can occasionally feel like an odd act of resistance.

My thanks to the whole KDD team – to Maylin and Claire for joining me in several months of sample knitting, and then making the Making Light club such a welcoming, well-oiled machine; to Kate C for joyfully embracing the challenges of cold-weather modelling; to Frauke for her careful tech editing, and our brilliant printers, Bell and Bain in Glasgow, for seeing the book through its final stages. And, most of all, my hearty thanks to YOU, our generous readers, knitters and club members, who make everything we do possible. Your Making Light book will be shipped out to you as soon as it is published, and do remember that your discount will expire on March 31st (the discount is valid for any purchase in the KDD shop, not just those of club-related kits and yarn). March 31st is the concluding day of our Making Light KAL as well: please post finished (or nearly finished) projects in the KDD group, or email Maylin with a picture of your knits if you are not on Ravelry: help@katedaviesdesigns.com. This is also the email to use if you’d like to let us know of any last-minute changes of personal details or address before we begin packing and shipping out your books. And if you weren’t part of the club, but are interested in buying the print book, e-book, or any of the individual patterns or kits, these will all be available after publication date, in a few weeks time.

Thank you so much for joining us in Making Light!