Author: Kate Davies Designs
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Falling and Laughing: or, why I love Orange Juice and loathe Spandau Ballet
On November 13th, 1980 Spandau Ballet made their Top of the Pops debut with their first single, To Cut a Long Story Short. Coiffed, primped and styled to within an inch of their lives, the north London quintet had kitted themselves out in full Highland dress for the occasion, complete with kilts, sashes, sporrans and…
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Postcard
Good morning! It’s time for a new Rip it Up (and Start Again) release, and today’s design is called Postcard. Postcard is a contemporary gansey, that’s worked from the top down. While the front features a series of highly textured twisted stitch panels, the back is plain-sailing stockinette. The upper back is worked first, and…
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Laughing Stock: songs for the end times
In November 1991, I was eighteen and had just started studying literature at the University of York. I bought a few vinyl LPs from a friend who was beginning to replace his extensive collection with CDs, among which were two Talk Talk records: Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock. The first album was the one…
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After the flood
Good morning! It’s Rip it Up pattern release day and, happily, after a couple of days without power here in Kintyre, we are fully back online. Perhaps appropriately, given the wild autumn weather, today’s design has a post-apocalyptic theme: After the Flood. After the Flood is a textured, cocooning cardigan that’s worked from the top-down.…
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Six creative lessons from Herbie Hancock
Apologies about the delay to your Sunday newsletter: following a severe storm this weekend, we are currently dealing with a power outage in South Kintyre, and I’m posting this from the library in Campbeltown. I’m hoping our electricity will be restored in good time for this week’s pattern release (which very much depends on our…
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heid hunter & veedon fleece
Good morning! I have two accessory designs inspired by two very different classic albums for you today: Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece and Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters. Both albums were recorded in 1973 (which was also the year that I was born). Why these two albums? Let me explain. Five years ago I designed a hat…
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Blue in Green and me
Good morning, and welcome to your Rip it Up (and Start Again) Sunday newsletter. Today’s long read explores my personal connection to ‘Blue in Green’, which you can hear on this week’s two classic albums, both recorded in 1959: Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of Blue’ and Bill Evans’ Portrait in Jazz. “Thanks, Dad!” It was my…
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Blue in Green
Thank you for all of your jukebox suggestions! I will update the itunes playlist later today. . . but first . . . This is Blue in Green: a super-cosy, super-quick, super-simple smock-style pullover of the type in which I want to live all winter. And it has pockets. Unusually, this pullover is not knitted…
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knitter’s jukebox
Hello! We are beavering away behind the scenes, getting ready for the first pattern from Rip it Up, and Start Again. Tomorrow, there’ll be a newsletter, and club members will receive the first pattern, together with a separate email containing your discount code, and other essential club information. Please check your spam folders (where this…
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Rip it up, and start again
Wow! Thanks so much to those of you who have already signed up for our Rip it Up club! I’m thrilled to be sharing this project with you, and to have this opportunity to celebrate some of my favourite music and musicians! There’ll be a lot of creative fun in coming weeks (we’ll be kicking…
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announcing . . .
Hello! Thank you for bearing with me. I have a couple of announcements for you today . . . First, congratulations to all the Yorlin knitters who have completed their fabulous cardigans. The grand winner of our KAL is lovely Amy, who knitted her beautiful version in the tasty, complex, Horseback Brown shade of Milarrochy…
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Playtime
Although my dad did not take photography particularly “seriously” and would never regard his images as constituting, in any sense, an “archive”, the photographs and slides I have been scanning certainly reveal a lot about him and his character. To someone who didn’t know my dad, his photographs might seem a bit confounding. My dad…
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St Martin’s
One of the things I’ve found comforting in these sad days has been scanning and organising my Dad’s old slides and photographs. Spanning the late 1950s to the 2000s, these images are not only a rich and evocative source of family memory, but are powerfully suggestive of my Dad’s creative sensibility. This is particularly evident…
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Wal Davies
My lovely dad, Wal Davies, died on August 12th, aged 89. Dad was a gentle, smart, and incredibly silly man. He was a jazz musician of extraordinary talent: from a teenager . . . to his final years. Dad loved the music deeply and unconditionally, as he loved so many things: . . .me and…
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button band top tips
Many Yorlin knitters have completed the bodies of their cardigans, knitted both the sleeves, and are now approaching the garment’s finishing lines – aka its button bands. I’m going to share a few button-band related thoughts with you today, and I’ll begin with a top tip I learned from the inimitable Hazel Tindall: when picking…
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Each to their own
Good morning, people, it’s your happy-go-lucky labrador-friend BOB here. All of us have our favourite summer activities, and BEACH is a great place to enjoy them. Would you like to come with BOB and see? BEACH is BOB’s happy place, as it is, I think, for many humans who live here in Kintyre. Kintyre humans…