business – KDD & Co

Woolly Originals

place, pattern and colour combine in beautiful, original design

Mimi and Gloria Onyekwere

contemporary bluestockings, Mimi and Gloria Onyekwere

make / mend: Collingwood-Norris

Kate talks to Flora Collingwood-Norris about mending, Scottish islands, and how colour makes you feel

changes

By: Kate Davies Designs December 31, 2020

businessBrexit, business, featured62 Comments

On the last day of 2020 here’s a post on a topic I’m sure you are all desperate to hear much more about – BREXIT! Ahem – I’m only joking. In all seriousness, though, it is no secret that the KDD team (like the vast majority of people here in Scotland) have heartily opposed the…

a whole lot of yokes

By: Kate Davies Designs October 29, 2020October 29, 2020

design, Kate Davies, Kate Davies Designs, knitting, publishing, textiles, YOKES!business, design, featured, publishing, sweaters, yoke sweaters, yokes23 Comments

We’ve been waiting for the new edition of YOKES to arrive from our printer, and I thought I’d go back through my records and check exactly how many copies we’d sold, in total, since the book was first published in December, 2014. I discovered that the total number of YOKES we’ve printed and sold is…

a chat with Misa Hay

There is no getting away from the fact that, whatever business you are in, this year has been a very weird one. Having to change the nature and direction of what you are doing – often very rapidly – is never an easy thing, and this year there have been so many of those changes.…

restock!

By: Kate Davies Designs August 1, 2020January 13, 2021

design, yarnbusiness, design, featured, stock, yarn12 Comments

For KDD, as for most other small businesses, the past few months have certainly posed their difficulties. I have not talked about such difficulties here: though some things have not been easy, I’m continually reminded that, unlike so many others, absolutely nothing we’ve had to face in any way counts as hardship. I’m grateful for…

wheesht

By: Kate Davies Designs December 6, 2019December 6, 2019

creativity, Kate Davies, publishing, reading, writingbook, business, creativity, disability, featured, independent publishing, publishing, small publishing, wheesht, writing11 Comments

Wheesht is published! You can now buy the book in the KDD shop, find out more about it at its dedicated website and we’ve even produced a set of 12 jolly postcards featuring the wonderful illustrations that Tom created for each chapter of the book. If you were part of our club earlier this year,…

Publishing news

By: Kate Davies Designs November 1, 2019November 2, 2019

creativity, design, publishingbooks, business, commissioning, distribution, featured, Kate Davies designs, Makadu, Make / Mark, new authors, publishing, trade, wholesale15 Comments

In recent years, the book-publishing side of what we do here at KDD has grown pretty dramatically. We’ve made some exciting changes that reflect that growth – both in the way we distribute our titles as well as in the kinds of books we publish. You’ll find more about the latter topic towards the end…

making things “locally”

As my business has grown over the past few years I have learned a lot about making things locally. Working with Scottish, Irish, and English producers, I’ve made my own books, and yarn, and knitwear. I’ve collaborated with many different types of manufacturers, from printers and spinners to dyers and wool producers. Being able to…

croft, craft, creativity

One of the many things I really like about the communities and cultures of crofting is their distinctive effect on the way people work. What I mean is this: in towns and cities, jobs tend to become more and more specialised, people do what they do within smaller and smaller categories, individual work occurs in…

en-able

I was recently having a chat with an academic pal of mine, who is working on a project looking at changes in the hand-knitting industry over the past few decades. She asked me about how I thought the industry had changed, and what I felt the major differences might be in establishing and running a…

Shetland Tannery

As part of our work researching and documenting Shetland Oo, this past August, Tom and I met Natalie Cairns-Ratter of the Shetland Tannery. I’d acquired several of Natalie’s beautiful sheepskins on earlier Shetland visits, and was intrigued to learn more about the tanning process, and how her company came about. Small-scale tanning was previously a…

Ninian

Next week (all being well at the printers) we are hoping to release our new Shetland Oo book! For those who don’t know, this is not a book of patterns, but a documentary project in words and photographs exploring the world of Shetland wool. Tom travelled all over Shetland meeting and photographing Shetlanders who work…