Tag: hap
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Beinn Àirigh Charr
The clocks have gone forward and we have made it through the winter (feeble yay). All over rural Scotland, this seasonal transition is marked by the movement of cattle to summer pastures, a tradition which is inscribed in the landscape with the old names of many fields and hills. Ten minutes walk from my front…
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a cowslip hap
Hello! Friday is project reveal day, and up today is a light and simple knit I’m really enjoying wearing at the moment – The Observatory. I originally created this design for our West Highland Way book, building the pattern around one of my all-time favourite Shetland lace edgings. This edging has a wonderful, intuitive rhythm,…
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summer shawls
We are gradually adding a range of different kits, books, and other products to the KDD shop, and the latest to arrive are kits for two of my most popular shawl designs – Fantoosh, and A Hap for Harriet. Both shawls are great for summer knitting, and I think both also make ideal accessories for…
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Ottar (hap)
I have been so inspired by Ottar (see yesterday’s post) that I decided to name my latest design for her – the Ottar hap. This is a hap I’ve had a notion to knit since I started working on The Book of Haps about eighteen months ago. As I researched Shetland hap construction, I became…
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hap stretcher tutorial
As you know, I photographed my Moder Dy design on a beautiful vintage hap stretcher that I borrowed from my friend Anne Eunson. In Shetland, such stretchers have been used for well over a century to block haps and shawls ready for sale, as well as for their knitters’ own domestic use. (washing and dressing…
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Shore Hap
Martina Behm will be well known to all of you as the creator of many beautiful shawls that have been made and enjoyed by thousands of knitters all over the world. Often working with garter stitch and using innovative techniques to create interesting shapes that wrap in multiple ways about the body, Martina’s designs seem,…
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Nut-Hap
It is Jen’s day! Hip Hap Hooray! When we began working on this project last year, Jen (Jen Arnall-Culliford) and I spent a considerable time musing on the brief that we sent out to designers. Haps were originally functional, working garments, and so we decided that the designers’ basic remit would be to create an…
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Hexa Hap
Today’s hap is a particular pleasure for me to introduce, as it was created by my dear friend, Tom van Deijnen (aka Tom of Holland), using my own Buachaille yarn. Tom’s hexagonal, modular Hexa Hap is just so very him. Spinning the customary borders-centre construction of Shetland haps in a completely new direction, it combines…
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Moder Dy
So this is my design for The Book of Haps! You can read a wee interview with me about it over on Jen’s blog today, but I thought I should say a little more about it here. I have been wanting to make a Shetland hap for quite some time, and before I did so,…
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thankyou, KCG
A few weeks ago, I visited the home of the UK Knitting and Crochet Guild – a fantastic organisation that exists to support and promote the crafts of knitting and crochet. The KCG is supported entirely by charitable donation, and is staffed by a group of wonderful volunteers, who administer a growing international membership; organise…
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Have you knit this pattern?
Do you recognise this pattern? Did you knit it or do you know someone who did? You may know it as Patons 893, or 1085, or H283, or simply as the tree of life pattern (under which name it is still being sold today on eBay). Did you knit it, or receive it in its…
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generosity
What an amazing week I had in Shetland! It was a complete privilege to see and talk to so many amazing knitters, who generously shared their work and thoughts with me. Mary Kay, at the Shetland Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers, shows us an incredibly fine lace shawl, knitted in Unst around 1930. Joan…