Sampling Week 5 and 6:  Knit Rotation

I was stuck at first looking for contextual research that would suit the knit rotation and my knitting experience. I was hugely influenced by rag tassels on the costumes worn by the Morris dancers and Mummers of Stroud (Mummers' plays are folk performances by troupes of amateur actors). From my initial yarn wraps and knitted samples, I realised firstly that my general knitting wasn’t very good, needing a lot of practise, and that I wanted to add the colour teal to my colour swatches. I visualised adding the teal into my colour pallet by using Photoshop on a Lino prints of welsh fans to create a pattern, I thought the colour matched the pallet really well and continued using teal in my samples. My knit research was very in depth, I looked into artists displaying their work in Weven, a local folk crafts shop, particularly finding myself interested by Wevens co-owner and Knitwear designer Mila Harris-Mussi. Her work with naturally dyed indigo knitwear inspired me to try dying my own knitted samples. I am really happy with my final knitted scarf made up of 16 squares each texturized with a different technique  such as embroidery, beading, tasselling, rust dyeing and printing or knit stitches such as Irish Moss Stitch, Basket Stitch, Seed Stitch, Eyelet Stitch, Crochet, Garter Ribbing Stitch, Purl Ridge Stitch and Pennant Pleating Stitch. The final effect looks like a pagan football scarf, it was inspired by my boyfriend’s patchwork quilt knitted by his Grandmother, it reminded me of something I read in the book Folk fashion (Holroyd, 2017) which states that anything handmade is folk.