I have done ‘plain knitting’ since my teenage years. Apart from baby blankets and jumpers, my most recent project involved learning fair isle and working with Shetland jumper weight yarn. The project, entitled Norah’s blanket, began when we got a new (to us) campervan. I was sitting on a campsite in Pembrokeshire looking at the colours in the spring scenery and decided that it would be an interesting exercise to attempt to replicate the colours in fair isle.
The plan evolved and I decided to make a square of everywhere we visited in Norah the van during our first year of ownership.
The project made me look much more carefully at colours and shapes and I felt that I viewed the world around me through a different lens.
The process involved choosing a photo that I felt best represented a place and then choosing between 6-8 yarn colours to represent it.
The intention was not to replicate the picture, but to suggest its essence. Sometimes a literal interpretation seemed appropriate – as with the triangles echoing the roof line of the beach huts. With other designs I used the colours in a more impressionistic way.