Forget-me-not Patterns on the global stage

If you’ve been following the launch of Tauko magazine, you might notice that New Zealander Johanna Morris - a Wellingtonian, to boot! - features in the first issue with her pattern for a lovely waterfall cardigan called Kirsi. We caught up with her to learn more about her pattern-making practice and her journey with her company, Forget-me-not Patterns, thus far.

Jo in her Adeline wrap dress

NEWTOWN HOUSE: Please tell us how you got started in sewing, and in pattern-making. When did you launch Forget-me-not?

JOHANNA MORRIS: I have always loved making things with my hands, so I've dabbled with all sorts of creative things throughout my life. I started out with home sewing as a hobby, but I never thought I'd seriously do anything fashion-related as a job. I started my design degree initially intending to work in visual design, but my obsession for pattern-making and fashion design was really where my heart was, and that led me to switch to get my bachelor's degree in fashion. After graduating, I realised that makers were my people, as I am very passionate about slow fashion, sustainability, and the joy of making. That led me back to the sewing community, and I launched Forget-me-not in mid-2019.

NH: How could you describe your style? Is it evolving over time?

JM: My style has definitely evolved a lot over time! When I first started, my style was a lot more kitsch and vintage-inspired. These days, I am more drawn to understated details and prints. I've never lost my love for tailored and fitted looks though; I think that will always be my favourite kind of style to design and wear! I think I'd describe myself as a shy but exacting person, so that comes through in my designs not being flashy, but having thoughtful details.

NH: What do you find most inspiring about your business?

JM: Definitely the lovely customers! I've met so many kind and supportive people in the sewing community. I love sharing their passion for making, and it inspires me to strive to make sewing as enjoyable as possible, with instructions that are helpful, and make learning fun! That was always a pain point for me as a beginner sewer; frustrating instructions that were vague and made you want to chuck the whole garment away. Haha!
NH: What's your favourite pattern, and why?

JM: My favourite pattern right now is the Adeline wrap dress. It has quite a few of my signature elements, with a tailored fit and a little something extra added with the structured diagonal pleats. It's all about the details! It also really challenged me - I like to design things that are not-so-basic and stand out from the crowd.

NH: What's next for Forget-me-not? (And how did you choose the name for your business?)

JM: Next year I'm hoping to release more designs! This year was a difficult one in so many ways, but I've slowly and steadily been moving forward. I always push myself technically as a pattern designer too, so no doubt there will be some interesting patternmaking and construction to show for my efforts. For the business name, I chose a flower that summed up my design vision - something that is quite delicate, and maybe not the biggest, boldest, brightest bloom, but beautiful nonetheless. And the name "Forget-me-not" also fits with my passion for the small details that make designs memorable.

NH: What's your favourite thing about sewing? How would you 'sell' the experience of garment sewing to someone who was curious about starting?

JM: My favourite thing about sewing is getting into the flow and watching a 2D pattern piece transform into a 3D shape thanks to my hands! There are so many things to love about sewing. I'd sell the experience as something that is very empowering. You get to make something that is uniquely you, and that's something to be proud of, no matter what you make. I never tire of sewing because there's always more to learn and always exciting designs on the horizon to explore.

Photos courtesy Jo Morris and TAUKO magazine. If you’d like a copy, you can pick one up from us here.

John Arbon's woolen quest

Newtown House: Can you tell us how you got started in yarn and fibre?

John Arbon: Ohhhh, well, it originally started way back in the early 80’s when I studied print at the LCP (London College of Printing) and learnt about silk-screen printing on textiles. Later in life I set up a T-shirt printing company called Shirt State, printing band and festival T-shirts, etc. Got to the point where I wanted to know more about the textile I was printing rather than the actual printing. So I enrolled at DMU, or Leicester Poly as it was, and studied a degree in Textiles & Apparel and specialised in spinning and knitting. I then went on to start a Masters at Nottingham Trent University but only got as far as PGDip in Textiles & Fashion. I then went on to work in the knit industry in Leicester before quitting it all and followed a pipe dream of starting a textile business in the South West utilising alpaca fibre.

John at work

NH: We know that you, John, have been responsible for restoring the Mill's machinery, with much of it salvaged from other mills that had closed down. How many pieces of equipment have you restored to their full glory? Are there any more waiting in the wings? Do you have a favourite?

JA: Well, we have worked on about 8 -10 machines over the years to get them running — wouldn’t say full glory, more like running fine and looking a bit tatty! One day we will give them all a lick of paint and they will return to their full glory! Favourite-wise I love Butler, the sample ring spinner — it’s a thing of beauty and totally bulletproof. This machine will spin for another 50 years at least — built in 1968, which makes me older than Butler! Last machine I revamped was Piglet, our mini-skein winder. Quite proud of the way that one turned out, so it is time for me to revamp Gillian, our 120-year-old skein winder. 

NH: Tell us why it's been so important for you to ensure skills and equipment are maintained, and even revived? 

JA: The industry is becoming more and more generic with large machinery spinning large volumes of craft yarn, and consequently we tend to see the same old yarns and blends doing the circuit, albeit in different and interesting dye combinations. With our old small-volume machinery and gentle, slower production we are able to offer diversity, quality and a real love and understanding of what we produce. It is vital we pass these skills on, and the knowledge of fibre and its behaviour, so that for future generations we can continue to produce bespoke quality craft yarns.

NH: What's it like walking into the Mill each day and firing up the machines you've carefully restored?

JA: Once you’ve done it  a thousand times it becomes automatic, although there is always a bit of anxiety if a new noise suddenly occurs — a slight knocking or buzzing — but to hear those machines hum in harmony and whirl out the fantastic yarn is always special. The weirdest bit is when everything is switched off, and then there is this deafening silence!

NH: What's been the hardest thing about this, and what has been the greatest reward?

JA: Hardest thing …..too many over the years, but big ones have been putting machines together from a pile of components when you have never see the machine built — somewhat daunting. Breaking machines down and literally humping solid steel and cast down flights of stairs in old mills. Being told not to bother, and you’re wasting your time to have nothing but a few quid in the back and a dream that one day it will all work. Not much change there, then!

NH: What's the highlight of the last 20 years - if you can name one? 

JA: Getting this far without a breakdown and retaining all my fingers! Seriously, seeing like-minded people in the Mill team get involved and sharing mine and Juliet’s vision and passion but also seeing them take it to new levels beyond what we could do. Things are always growing and evolving, and we couldn’t do that without our team.

NH: What's ahead for the next 20 years?

JA: More please! More fantastic yarns, new blends, new breeds, exciting new colour combos, more patterns, new techniques creating new interesting and diverse yarns…..watch out, here we come!

Inspirations from vintage vinyl for Yarnadelic

NH: Anything else you’d like to add?

JA: I would just say this: There is nothing special about what me and Juliet have done. All it takes is the desire and will to do something you are passionate about and tried your damndest to do it well with style. To that end it would be great to see other such mills in the UK doing similar to what we have done rather than importing yarn into the UK. Let’s face it, we have a lot of sheep and a lot of yarn crafters here, plus we should be exporting unique yarns, not importing! 

Photos courtesy John Arbon Textiles

Cassandra Harada: A true thread person

Cassie in one of her own designs

Cassandra Harada is an American living in Tokyo, and it’s no stretch to say she can turn her hand to anything.

We first stumbled across Cassie on Instagram, where her profile caught our eye for its brevity and mingling of pursuits that sounded very, ah, familiar. “Knitter, Tailor, baker, Tri. 糸人です。A tiny champion for the world of handcraft, and mediocre athleticism.” (糸人です roughly translates into “I’m a thread person.”) Among the many things we adore about Cassie, this is one.

A triathlete who has a wool business, knits gorgeous sweaters at an amazing rate, lives in Japan, is learning bespoke tailoring under Japanese masters and bakes with earnestness on the regular? I had to know more. (Full disclosure: I used to compete in long-course triathlon, promoted those triathlons and finished my journalism career editing a multisport magazine.)

I shamelessly reached out to Cassie and our friendly online connection grew into a business one. And now we are so delighted to say that we have a small import quantity of glorious Harada Wool to offer to our customers, saving you the international freight from Japan and helping spread the joy of small-batch wool to this corner of the world. 

Of course we had to put together an interview with Cassie, who was as delightful as ever.

The Grey Fox Fair Isle project

Read on, and then please do give her a follow on Instagram at @cassandra_harada and check out her website at haradawool.com. While you’re wandering the interwebs, you can also read all about her collaboration with David Evans, also known as the Grey Fox (@greyfoxblog) on Instagram, on a gorgeous Fair Isle sweater she designed and knit for him in Jamieson’s Shetland wool (@jamiesonsofshetland), then sent across the world to him in the UK. (Spoiler: Of course it fit perfectly!!) She’s also working with Brycelands, a Tokyo and Hong Kong based menswear company that is selling some of her hand knits and sharing her guidance on looking after your woolens - check out her darning and woolen washing tutorials here.

Newtown House: Tell us a little bit about your background - where you grew up, how you learned to knit and sew, how you got into multisport…!

CH: The best way to describe where I come from is to mention the name “Tom Sawyer”. I was raised in a farm town (although my family weren't farmers at the time) in west central Illinois along the Mississippi River. My mother embodies “American frontier optimism” in that if she wants something, she does it or makes it herself. I grew up watching her, especially when she did “making jobs” for extra money. I remember that my mother wanted to start sewing so we could make some things to sell. We didn't have a sewing machine but we'd borrowed one from a friend and she taught me how to sew straight lines so I could help make hair scrunchies. I have always been interested in handcraft though, starting in elementary school with beadwork and chain stitch crochet. I was always making something!   

Tri prep

On multisport: I was never a very sporty kid or interested in athletics at all, but suddenly at 34 my switch flipped, I guess? I tend to do things to the extreme. "Just a little" isn't really in my vernacular. I started running about five years ago, and Ironman seemed like a logical conclusion! I'd always admired cyclists, and swam a little as a child. I don't know what my immediate future of racing looks like as almost everything for this year has already been cancelled, but I hope I'll get to attend an event again sometime soon.   

NH: And can you give us an idea of your journey into and through the fibre world - was wool, knitting and yarn production always a part of your family life? 

CH: I started knitting my first year at university. I remember going to a craft store and picking up a $10 "Learn how to knit" kit as a way to "rebel" against my grandmother who swore crochet was the better of the two crafts. I'm not sure why that sparked my rebellion, but I've never really second-guessed my reaction. She still makes the occasional rude comment!   

When I was 19 I was walking through a handcraft fair at my university. I saw a man sitting at a spinning wheel with a pile of wool in his lap…he took the tufts of fluff and magically turned them into string. I remember being SO taken aback by that and immediately scraped together every penny I could find to buy a used wheel. I imported it from Australia, waited every day at the door in disappointment while the postman rumbled past the house. I clearly remember the joy I felt at ripping that box open and watching the wheel spin the first time...after some serious assembly of course. It's a wobbly old wheel but learning on that monstrosity made spinning later in life so very much easier. While I was doing that I also started reading books about sock knitting and producing garter stitch scarves that sometimes randomly turned into stockinette stitch scarves, or got wider and narrower at various points. It was a fun point in my career. I was in art school then, and knitting was just something I did in the hallways while I waited for class to start. I loved the way it felt to build row by row, though.   

Fast-forward a couple years and a baby, and I picked my “hobby” back up, and added an Ashford Joy. As my daughter grew up, my urge to make became more difficult to ignore and I started designing some knitwear patterns for a Chinese yarn company between parenting moments.

My parents bought a 33-acre patch of land in my hometown and they started talking about a possible pasture. They knew I loved wool, so they said “Hey, let’s get some sheep!" I was never really sold on the idea until we went and picked them up. I spent a good amount of time talking with the breeder and became very excited by what she was doing with the wool she produced. I was scared we wouldn't be able to keep the parasites away, and absolutely terrified at the prospect of losing any to disease or injury, but the breeder was pretty supportive and my parents had really done their homework. It feels natural now, and I think my parents really enjoy keeping them. It's really difficult to find good shearers, but we figure it out. When I met my friend Christie, I was taken with her mohair goats and remembered seeing English sock yarn with added mohair for strength instead of nylon. It seemed like fate. Epic Sock seemed like the perfect culmination of our friendship and our love for fibre.    

NH: What brought you to Japan? And can you tell us how Harada Wool got started? 

CH: I moved to Japan six months after I graduated university because as an art major I remember my professors saying, “You cannot make art without life experience to draw on.” I had always wanted to travel, so I took the opportunity to go the moment I was offered a job at a Tokyo language school.  It was easy work and I had all the time in the world to explore, and grow up.  

 On how I decided to make Cormo yarn: About a decade into my knitting career I came across a yarn called “Elsa Wool”. I ordered a couple of hanks because I'd heard it was good. When it came in the mail I immediately thought, ”What is this magic????” and started reading and researching a little more about the Cormo sheep breed. Elsa has been raising and working in Cormo since the ‘70s, but she is one of the only large-scale producers I know of. As it turns out, half the magic was in the spinning (at Blackberry Ridge Woolen Mill).  

When my dad asked me what kind of sheep I might like to have on the farm in Illinois I immediately shouted that he MUST find some Cormos, and it seemed to me the only breed worth raising, as the yarn is quite rare. We figured out pretty quickly why that is, and we're still smoothing out lots of bumps in the road as we produce yearly.  

NH: Tailoring is another love of yours - what prompted your interest? Can you tell us a bit about what that study is like? What are your favourite garments to make?

CH: Tailoring is another opportunity to work with wool. Wool cloth is similar to yarn in lots of ways. Woolen-spun cloth, worsted-spun cloth, you can feel the life of the animals it came from in different ways. I love doing iron work and building beautiful garments out of all of my favourite sheep breeds.

“Tailored garments are like superhero capes,” says Cassie

The other thing that really draws me to tailoring is that tailored garments are like superhero capes. When a man or a woman puts on a well-tailored suit they are automatically more confident. There's nothing better than seeing a person smile when they look in the mirror after they've just put on their new suit. I love being part of that! I also love making clothes for other immigrants here that can't find clothes to fit them in the regular shops. There's absolutely nothing better than taking away the stigma of size and making a person feel whole when they slide on trousers that actually fit them. Every person deserves that. Helping people feel good about themselves is what makes all of the ugly parts of life worth it.   

NH: What's the woolly life like in Tokyo? For us at a distance, it looks like Tokyo’s climate has plenty of heat but also proper winter ... this suggests you can keep the knitting going year round, from wooly wools to linen and cotton. What trends do you see in knitting and knitwear design in Tokyo?

CH: Knitting in Japan is great! The heat is usually relegated to the month of August so knitting year-round is certainly a possibility! (I knit year-round anyway!). In Japan I see mostly oversized sweaters and simple boxy shapes. They don't look great on me, but If I see a stitch pattern I like I can usually modify it into a shape that suits me. My first couple of years as a shop owner, Ravelry exploded and knitting in English became very trendy. I think most Japanese knitters can now read the basics of English patterns without too much stress. Those linens and cottons that you speak of though, I know nothing of those! (wink, wink!)

NH: You've also got substantial experience in translating Japanese knitting and crochet designs and books into English. What are some fundamental differences in how knitting and crochet patterns are presented in Japanese charts that Western knitters could benefit from understanding? 

CH: In 2015 or so I met Gayle Roehm. She's the real master on this topic but I'll give this a go. Japanese knitting and crochet patterns are mostly visual.  As a veteran craftsperson whose hands understand what to do, I really appreciate this but I know many people prefer written patterns.   I love big charts and schematics rather than being glued to long strings of text. I think that might be because at 38, my eyes are starting to go! My favourite thing about Japanese charts is how simple they are. Even more difficult patterning is simplified down to keep fields of reverse stockinette or stockinette clean so the areas that need visual attention are obvious. When you're knitting a Japanese pattern, look for the two or three keys scattered around a schematic that will tell you what sort of field you're working on (if you're making cables or lace) so you can just get on with the actual ornamental bits.  

NH: Tell us about your favourite uses for a skein or two of Harada Wool. What are the highlight properties of this special yarn for you?

CH: Cormo is soft. I think it makes good anything really, but especially socks, shawls, and lightweight sweaters. Last year I knitted "Poplar" by Ayano Tanaka in Harada Wool, and it turned out beautifully. I like that this yarn is sock weight as you can knit it densely for a more utilitarian garment but because of the mohair halo, you can also knit it at a bit lower gauge and get a light fabric great for sweaters.   

NH: You and I have talked a lot about our shared love of sheepy wools, in particular Shetland wools that are so perfect for colourwork and long-wearing garments. What draws you to these yarns, and do you have a favourite style of knitting or design approach for these yarns?

CH: I've been asked my “why” a lot lately. I'm not sure what draws me to the sheepier wools, aside from the fact that I get really bored with “soft”. I also love the fact that the sheep understand the climate much better than we do. Because hardwools are mostly from more humid places, their wool is great for wicking and keeping dry. I often feel a bit soggy in a soft wool sweater during rainy season, but hard wool is like a rain coat. It's a great layer of protection! Ultimately my favourite thing to knit in Shetland is traditional drop-sleeve fairisle. Perhaps I'm boring but I tend to stick to the basics!  

NH: What has kept you going through the pandemic? 

CH: This is a great question. I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I'd have to say that I am at a large crossroads in my life that happens to coincide with this horrible world pandemic. I'm trying to make smart decisions that will keep my life interesting. Peeking around the next corner and wondering where I'll be in five years if I keep working really hard is probably what has carried me through. We haven't had a ton of serious “lockdown” though, so It's been easier to muddle through than in other countries. I'd say most of what keeps me going though is focusing on gratitude. I have so very much to be grateful for!

NH: We're guessing that it has been very challenging to keep Harada Wool going from a distance during the pandemic. If you're willing to share some of those, I think people could benefit from hearing about the challenges so they can get an idea of what the last year or so has been like for so many yarn producers. 

CH: Hmm, it's such a low-volume business, but I'd say the thing that keeps it going well is keeping the story alive. I'm so lucky to have a large following of lovely people who are interested in small-batch, quality products. Also, I've been lucky enough to befriend some really talented designers that help me sell the yarn with their beautiful work.   

NH: Here's a question that might be difficult for one of the busiest, most creative people we know: What's next for you? 

CH: Goodness, I have so much lined up for the next year. I'm selling some of my knit work in a really gorgeous menswear store that has branches in both Tokyo and Hong Kong.   

Since our yarn was delayed this year due to the pandemic, we've decided to make cloth with our next shearing! I'm very excited about that!

In the in-between I'll keep tailoring and knitting as much I can!

All photos courtesy Cassandra Harada

Cassie and wooly friend

FOR THE FOOD PEOPLE

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The joy of a custard square

There’s something a little bit magic about people who feed others for a living. Food is so rich with meaning for so many of us, and the lockdown world we’re in has meant we’re all cooking more every day, whether we like it or not. Thankfully we are happy cooks most of the time but even still…we’re now months into all meals at home all the time, often pulled together after long work days that offer no headspace to even conceive of what dinner should be until the time for dinner has arrived, some constraints around supply (lolz), and don’t start with the drama that shopping is now. There have been tears. There have been some Interesting meals, many involving the cook’s best friend, an egg. And there has been plenty of delicious, too, helped in large part by the inspiration and generosity of people like chef Danielle Alvarez, the good people of Good Food, and always, dearest chef Jeremy Lee keeping us all entertained on Instagram with his sketches and his beautiful at-home meals. And too many more to name.

This crisis gives us plenty of things to worry about, from the gigantic to the teensy. For us this includes our food people - the restaurants, their suppliers, the grocers, the farmers, the chefs, the bakers, the butchers, the cheese-makers, the chocolatiers, the coffee roasters…the list goes on. How will they hang on when they’ve been forced to shut their doors, when they’ve been locked out of the places they love and have built through years of sweat and toil? And what about the people who work for them? Here in Wellington, people like Coffee Supreme and the Shelly Bay Baker jumped into the fray early, ensuring they could keep on feeding people by post and delivery van. The work, we know, has been long and exhausting and WE ARE SO GRATEFUL. Grateful for every cup of Bob-o-Link, every hot cross bun, every slice of toast that hasn’t been produced from the sometimes-balky home starter. 

Box o’ delights

As the lockdown restrictions have eased, more of our beloved food people have been able to come online, in an often total reorientation and reinvention of their business models, to both feed people and keep their businesses afloat. Which brings us tonight, when we finally had a meal not entirely prepared by ourselves, with the treat of a produce box from Wellington’s Rita restaurant. We knew it would have some pantry items and some produce and beyond that … well, it would be a surprise. (We’d also ordered a wee cake and a custard square because, well, weeks of sometimes Interesting meals make you a bit eager where treats are concerned.)

So you can imagine the joy of opening this box, full as it was of beautiful food and, there’s really only one word for it, love. Homemade passata in a jar, fresh herbs, an amazing aioli, beautiful vegetables and a gorgeous loaf of bread. A few perfect limes! Tomatillos! Radicchio - are you serious? MY STARS. Things that make a cook’s heart leap. All packed up with notes explaining what was in the box, who made it, and some ideas about how to use the jewels inside.

So a heartfelt thank you to Kelda and Paul and the rest of the team at Rita, and all the other food heroes out there who have kept things rolling, like our local Baker Gramercy (oh croissants), Rich and People’s coffees, the good folk behind the foodie collective @pandemicpack and the many, many others so eager to get back to opening their doors later this week. We wish you all the best - from an appropriate distance, of course. But someday when we can we might just give you a big ol’ hug and embarass the dickens out of you.

Miss Click Clack: Building a life around colour and texture

Kelly O’Day - aka Miss Click Clack - in Melbourne black

We were first drawn to Miss Click Clack / Kelly O’Day’s beautiful yarn in part by her gorgeous, moody blacks and dark tones which to us evoke Melbourne’s dark laneways, changeable weather (like Wellington!) and chic fashionistas. If Sydney is sparkle and white, Melbourne is cool and black. At least that’s how it seems to us from a distance! But digging into the story of Miss Click Clack was even more fascinating – as her Instagram profile tells us, she had cancer twice. Her relentlessly positive attitude, her amazing photography from wild spots around the world and around Australia and her (naturally) lovely handknits (and oh, the socks) compelled us to write to her to learn more. She kindly obliged with the interview below.

NEWTOWN HOUSE: Please tell us how you got started yarn wrangling / dyeing / knitting ... and what was the work you were doing before you started working with wool?

Precocious and clever crafting: Fibre love started early for Kelly O’Day.

KELLY O’DAY: Craft insinuated itself into my life at an early age. When I was a pre-schooler a sewing kit was offered to me by way of a bribe if I’d cut my hair for school. I succumbed to the lure, but yarn was already my jam. I’d learnt to knit at four, and in prep (my first year of school) I completely rocked (over same haircut) an apricot pixie hat I’d made from a stockinette rectangle folded and seamed on one edge, affixed by a couple of garter stitch straps. Then when I was seven my mum learnt to crochet, and she taught me. I liked it. A lot. In Year 5 I crocheted myself so many garments (seven) that my teacher asked if I’d make something for her. But my dad, protective of his prodigious spawn, said no. These days we would have seen the opportunity – he’d have been be my agent, contracts would’ve been drawn replete with IP clauses and stipulations of hefty remuneration, I’d have had my own tweeny podcast, and, of course, there’d be those segments on daytime TV where I’d have looked completely darling in some groovy, self-crafted ‘70s ensemble, still sporting most of my milk teeth. But being the parents of a craftily precocious child also had its downside. At ten, in true enfant terrible style, I threw my first hissy fit because I had to settle for a ‘lesser’ pure wool yarn than the ‘superior’ one I wanted for a granny square tank-top. I’d become a yarn snob. The template for adult life had been set. 

Yarn and I hung out right through high school and right through uni. When I set off to work at a cytogenetics lab in a large teaching hospital my knitting bag jumped into the car and rode shotgun.

The foray into crafty retail came late in my working career. I was knitting during work breaks and one day realised that I had a stupid number of hand-knitted accessories lying idle. So I started side-hustling under the brand ‘Miss Click Clack’. Things took off and I sold hundreds and hundreds of my Smith Street Beret (sounds kind of OCD now that I put that in print…). It was always fun to cruise up and down Smith Street Collingwood, or Brunswick Street Fitzroy (two happening precincts) and count them off, and secretly snap the occasional photo (sounds kind of creepy now that I put that in print…). I wanted to make berets in colours I couldn’t find so yarn dyeing seemed the logical next step. I’d also started buying hand-dyed sock yarn which had awakened something big in me. Lightbulb big. Epiphany big. I want-to-do-it-too big. I began to dabble, but was curtailed from running with it while working, so there was a hiatus of several years before ‘Miss Click Clack Yarn Dyer’ hit the retail scene in a meaningful way.

NH: Where did you get the idea for Miss Click Clack, and how challenging was it for you starting out? And where did you get the name Miss Click Clack?

Miss Click Clack’s moody beauties

KO: I appropriated part of the ‘Miss Click Clack’ name from a knitting ad that used to be on the telly a million years ago. It had a breathy, onomatopoeic ‘click clack’ voiceover which, over the years, would pop in and out of my consciousness until I eventually robbed it and became ‘Miss Click Clack’. It was only after I quit my job following a cancer diagnosis that Miss Click Clack took a jump to the right and morphed into the yarn dyer that most of you are familiar with. Yarn dyeing was supposed to be a ‘gentle hobby that paid for itself’ while I considered my new post-cancer life and I set modest production targets. But after some early attention on social media things went BANG so I cranked things up, dyeing on my kitchen stove full time between meals. I think I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time with a product that filled a hole. Melbourne seemed to be gagging for a local dyer who understood her urbane, moody aesthetic - her love of black, charcoal, navy, and colours shot with grey – with the occasional need for a punchy colour accent. Of course, my yarn sells everywhere – not just here in my hometown - and I have many loyal customers from myriad climes (including NZ!) so there’s a lot of what I like to call ‘Melbourne taste’ out there. Of course, it might really just be urbane-taste-in-a-temperate-climate! But whatever the truth, I’ve claimed the palette for Melbourne, as I’m not one for letting the truth get in the way of a good story! 

NH: Tell us a bit about your range of Melbourne blacks - they're glorious. But what is it about Melburnians and black? And what are your primary inspirations for your colourways?

KO: The colourway ‘Melbourne Black’ is a moody blue-leaning charcoal which pays homage to both Melbourne’s iconic bluestone buildings, and her love of peri-black fashion. Melburnians love boots, and denim, and love to layer. They love wearing eclectic contemporary brands with vintage pieces, to which colour pops are added via a scarf or beanie. So the deliciously peri-black Melbourne Black went off like a bomb. I was rapt. I love my hometown and most of my yarn bases have some sort of Melbourne angle to their name (for example, ‘Bearbrass,’ the name of my BFL base, was one of the early name contenders for Melbourne before ‘Melbourne’ got the official gong). It’s been important to me to keep the Melbourne identity and to not lose that connection to the generous community that put me on the yarn-map in the first place.

Kelly in the tundra wearing a raspberry Rikke hat

NH: How do you spend your days, these days?

KO: If knitting hundreds of the same beret wasn’t a sufficiently illuminating glimpse into an aspect of my personality then let me be explicit: when struck by a passion I can be obsessive. And dyeing yarn became a passion which became obsessive - to the detriment of my well-being on occasion. But five-plus years down the track (I don’t like to rush things) I’m happy to report that I’ve finally found a work-life balance that works. I’m reading again, seeing family and friends more often, having ‘date-days’ with my husband, keeping up with my daily walks, and planning to get down-and-dirty doing conservation work on a bush block we’ve just bought. Sadly, dear husband, there still isn’t time for housework. 😉

So, yes, I am still dyeing, but dyeing less. But when I do want to chuck a bit of colour on some yarn I work to a three days’ rhythm. I studiously made a list of everything I do over these three days in the first draft of the answer to this question, but by the end I’d chewed through half an A4 page and my eyes had completely glazed over and rolled back into my head. So I will spare you the excruciating minutiae of being a solo yarn-dyer dyeing between meals on her kitchen stove. Instead I will tell you that in each day there are about two hours of ‘fun’ (dyeing/admiring) and eight hours (yes, the days can be long) of ‘un-fun’. Dyers can look so glamourous in public settings, surrounded by their delicious work. But you never see the pot-scrubbing, the back-breaking rinsing of yarn in the bathtub, the standing in queues at the post office, and the violence perpetrated against printers that spit the dummy when orders need to be printed and shipped. And my finger-tips – perennially wrinkled – I always fail the fingerprint test when entering the US.

NH: What inspires you? And which aspects of your work do you most enjoy? And how do you power through the less-fun parts?

KO: When I was fifteen my Home Group teacher gave me Peter Bowler’s The Superior Person’s Little Book of Words, confirming absolutely my (unspoken) self-estimation that I was, indeed, a Superior Person. I then proceeded to shoehorn my (now even more) Superior Lexicon into essays, much to the amusement of other teachers, while haughtily poo-pooing snorts of derision from classmates. Which is all quite a circumambagious (ahem) way of saying that I have loved words and language from a very early age and that often a colourway name comes to me before the actual colourway. In fact I keep a running list of prospective names which I augment (because the list never reduces) as inspiration strikes. I have colourways that are single words (‘Spodumene’, ‘Petrichor’); an entire range inspired by bears (‘Bear Hug’, ‘Bear Market’, ‘There’s A Bear in There’); another inspired by ponies (‘Show Pony’, ‘The Dappled Pony’, ‘The Felicitous Filly’); names inspired by pop culture and catchcries (‘Favourite 501s’, ‘Fake News’, ‘Houston, We Have a Problem’, ‘You’re Not the Boss of Me’); by songs and music (‘Brass in Pocket’, ‘We Got Married in a Fever’, ‘Ring of Fire’); and - because I like to show off - the occasional Shakespearian reference including ‘Fair Verona’, with ‘Posh Boy’ and ‘Poncing Pufflington Pants’ inspired by the “Upstart Crow” TV series). Occasionally the inverse happens and I am struck with Colourway Name Block which makes me very crabby because Superior Persons ought to be immune from such lapses. Nevertheless these little word games and pun plays are fun, and one of the ways I power through the many ‘less fun parts’. 

That, and dopamine.

Stripey socks

Apparently, every time an online sale notification pops up on my phone a big, juicy squirt of dopamine hits my brain’s reward centre. I guess it’s this addiction to the ‘hit’ that keeps many microbusinesses (including mine) ticking over even when the physical work is demanding and the financial remuneration modest. It certainly explains a lot of my extreme behaviours (the more I dye the more I sell and the more hits I get!). I now appreciate the importance of enforcing a sensible work/life balance. But while all that brain chemistry stuff is going on unconsciously, consciously I also derive a lot of pleasure from the aesthetic of a dyed skein of yarn (I can admire a new colourway for days!) and then get an enormous buzz seeing it crafted into something wonderful by a customer. These are the things that make it all worthwhile. That and the friends I’ve made. The community has been abundantly generous with its love.

NH: Your Instagram profile is fascinating - you talk about being an aspiring flaneuse (a concept I am completely in line with), a lapsed cytogeneticist and that you once had cancer twice. We'd be grateful to hear as much of what sits behind those lines as you're comfortable sharing. 

KO: Oh I could have listed many more things (failed novelist! occasional twitcher! champion of the apostrophe!) but I was limited by the number of characters in Instagram’s bio field which might be just as well for the reading pleasure of your lovely audience!

Aspiring Flaneuse: ‘aspiring’ because there is certain sartorial comportment that goes with being a proper Flaneuse which I’m unlikely to achieve in leisurewear. But I’ve been a street explorer forever (albeit propelled by a bike as a kid). My favourite period of nearly proper ‘flaneusing’ (should that be a word) was in my 20s and 30s when I lived in inner Melbourne. I would watch the people - what they were doing, what they were wearing, how they were living - all the while pondering the big questions: what it means to be human (which decisions are free, and which are pre-ordained, hard-wired), how we live together, what drives our need for personal space, and what are the ways we express either our individuality, or allegiance to a tribe (although I confess that in my current suburban domicile I’m largely perplexed and preoccupied by the human need to exact periodic domination over a patch of lawn with a violent machine). I also love to walk the laneways - the public spaces that most people don’t stop to explore - the service network of micro-streets that run behind houses and businesses. In fact, I have a yarn base that has a twist which reminds me of the bluestone pitchers that pave many of Melbourne’s laneways. I named it ‘Nightman’s Highway’, a nod to the forgotten ‘nightman’ and his weekly tending of the household ‘thunderbox’ via these laneways (yes, #worldsworstjob). So you see, that flaneusal (should that also be a word!) part of me has percolated into my yarn dyeing business!

A coffee break from the dye pots

‘Lapsed cytogeneticst’: I’m loathe to divorce myself from the moniker ‘cytogeneticist’ as it was my identity for decades, so ‘lapsed’ is our gentle separation. 

‘I once had cancer twice’: one day I left work early to have a mammogram, and I never went back. In the process of characterising one cancer, a second and different cancer was found. Two different cancers, one episode of cancer surgery and treatment. It was very efficient of me.

NH: What is ahead for Miss Click Clack?

KO: I have no plans to crank up production, so perhaps it’s time for Miss Click Clack The Book?! My friends will tell you that at any one time there is the plot a novel in my head! As Miss Click Clack I’ve accrued an excellent stockpile of fibre industry stories – some related to the warm and diverse yarn-addicted friends I’ve made along the way, others to the cunning and devious ways of villainous (I just wanted to use that word!) rival dyers – stories ripe for comedic exploitation by some sassy author! Just between you (and your x-thousand readers) and me I’d love to be that sassy author, but, sadly, I procrastinate more than ‘do’, and there is a chaos in my head these days (I blame my BC meds but my husband tells me I’ve always been scatty) that makes it difficult to corral those thoughts into something cohesive on a computer screen. But many will attest that my catchcry when asked about my yarn dyeing days is ‘there’s a book in this!’. I expect it will be my epitaph. Sans book. Meanwhile I will simply continue making random jottings in scrappy notebooks….

NH: Tell us a bit about your recent trip to North America - it looked just epic. How long was it in the planning, and what inspired your choice of destination? 

KO: Yes, it was epic. We flew from Melbourne to San Francisco (via Auckland - NZ context!), grabbed a hire car, and drove a loop to Fairbanks (Alaska) and back. I confess to having only a small role in its planning (me: ‘Alaska looks nice’). All credit goes to my husband, who has the curious and seemingly juxtaposed attributes of having indolence down to a fine art on the home front, yet complete mania on road-trips. All roads need to be explored, and a missed side-trip is a missed opportunity. So we travel hard. Sixteen thousand kilometres hard! He finessed the route over a couple of months then all I had to do was sit in the passenger seat and watch the scenery slide by. This was our third road-trip to western USA and Canada. We’re both into vistas and wildlife and getting a good snap or two so western North America, with its stunning landscapes, bears (!), and majestic mountains, ticked all the boxes. And we’re not done yet! It’s a continent that’s also very easy to drive (even if they do drive on the wrong side of the road) because the roads are great, and – unlike Melbourne – the drivers are courteous and considerate. Of course, I love my own country and could never live anywhere else - I’d miss Australia’s noisy wildlife and its own magnificent vistas - but North America makes an excellent travel alternative. Plus I always return with the most awesome boots.

NH: Tell us about your favourite meal - and perhaps if you are willing please share a favourite recipe!

KO: I don’t have one favourite meal so, instead, let me share with you a couple of food-related idiosyncrasies. I love eating from bowls - big bowls - bowls the size of your head. And I love eating from said bowls with Japanese chopsticks. And it doesn’t really matter too much what’s in them. So in the privacy of my own home I might eat a bowl of pasta with chopsticks, or a bowl of salad. Just because. I also like eating with my hands so I love, for example, jamming slices of thin-crusted pizza down my throat, or slathering up the juices of a curry with naan or roti and jamming that down. 

Here’s a recipe for a salad I devised using baked, spiced cauliflower florets (and amenable to a bowl and chopsticks, should you so desire it!):

To prepare the cauliflower: place florets in a baking dish, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with Ras El Hanout (AKA Top of the Shelf spice mix), cover with foil and cook in a warm oven until al dente. 

Once cool-ish, toss florets through mesclun or baby spinach leaves. Add soaked and drained cranberries, sunflower seeds, dollops of cottage cheese, and whatever else is at hand that appeals –sliced firm pear, sliced orange or mandarin, cherry tomatoes. Substitute cubes of feta cheese or fried haloumi for the cottage cheese if you desire. Drizzle with a supermarket-bought balsamic vinegar glaze. Make a meal out of it by adding a poached egg or two, or by tossing through pieces of grilled salmon.

Or if you really want to get down and dirty - à la Miss Click Clack - substitute iceberg or cos/romaine lettuce and make hand-held shooters.

What is one thing about you that might surprise people?

What?! And spoil that book?! You’ll just have to wait 😉

---

Kelly is also a prolific knitter of sweaters - including for her lucky sisters, shown here wearing gorgeous versions of Caitlin Hunter’s Zweig and Engle sweaters. Plus, the berets that started it all!

Frances Paki and Sally Graham: Crafting runs in the family

Sally Graham and her daughter, Frances Paki, live close enough for regular quality time together - including knitting, of course! Sally wears her Orkney Cardigan by Marie Wallin, while Frances is sporting the Whitehorse jumper by Caitlin Hunter and a pair of self-drafted trousers.

Auckland’s Frances Paki and her mum, Sally Graham, are two exceedingly inspirational makers. Knitting, sewing, gardening and cooking are all part of their lives - daily habits of creativity and care for themselves and their families. Frances, 34, grew up rural, just south of Auckland and now lives closer to Auckland central with her family, where she works from home doing pattern making and sewing. Her mum, Sally, is 60 and works part-time as a paediatric nurse. Although she grew up on the South Island, she’s lived in and around Auckland most of her adult life, which keeps her close to family (and her darling wee granddaughter). “Part-time is great,” Sally said, “as I have time for knitting, spinning and sewing. I also love gardening and have a small city garden which is crammed full of plants. My next project is to try and get more of a dye garden established.”

We were fortunate enough to get them to sit still long enough to answer some questions for us about their lives, how they incorporate daily creativity into their worlds, and the value they place on making. We’ll start with Frances.

Newtown House: Please tell us how you got started in the fibre arts - did you learn as children, who taught you, and what encouraged you to keep going? 

A selection of Frances’ earliest creations - including a hat she made for Brownies.

Frances Paki: Mum taught me many crafts as a kid. Knitting, sewing, crochet, cross-stitch, tapestry, cooking, gardening - she was always making things for herself, me and my brother, and the home. There were always materials around so it was easy to keep going, and mum was always supportive of projects. I went to manual during form 1 and 2 where I sewed, cooked and did woodwork. I remember finding the sewing and cooking we learnt being relatively straightforward because I did it a lot at home already. Woodwork was fun, and one term I made a huge chair with storage under the seat. I have sewn throughout most of my life but stopped knitting during my mid-late teens and picked it up again in my twenties. I was traveling all the time for work and wanted something to satisfy my making needs while I was away. Now I like to make things for my own family. It is a part of my everyday life.

NH: Tell us about some of your earliest sewing / knitting / crafting memories...and do you still have any of the garments or other treasures you might've made? 

FP: I vividly remember knitting a hat for Brownies when I was 8 or 9. It is an apricot colour. I remember Mum helped with a few rows, as did her sister, Jane, when she came stay while I was making it. I have memories of making many pouches/bags on the sewing machine and a doing a ballet slipper cross-stitch that I was very proud of. I am quite sentimental when it comes to handmade things. I still have the hat and the cross-stitch and a few other treasures made when I was young. 

NH: Why is it important to you to make things for yourselves and your loved ones? Has this become more important over time? If so, why?

FP: There's something very satisfying about wearing something you've made, or seeing someone you love wear something you've made. I think I've always appreciated handmade things but there was a time when I enjoyed shopping more. Making is definitely growing in importance for me as I get older and my family has grown. It's also important for me to make so our daughters learn that it is possible to do so many things yourself and you don't need to always buy it from a shop.

NH: Following on from that, what aspects of your crafts give you the most joy? 

FP: I really enjoy the planning aspect of making. Finding the right pattern for a lovely piece of fabric, looking through my wardrobe and figuring out what I need for the coming season. Knitting has grown in importance for me since I started sewing for a job. I still enjoy sewing but needed something different for my down time and knitting does that. I find it very relaxing and rarely a day goes past when I don't knit.

Frances dyed the rusty colour of Moeke yarn herself, using madder root, to complete this Grandma Shawl by Junko Okamoto.

NH: Tell us about your favourite patterns or styles - and how your choices may have evolved over time. 

FP: The rise of Independent pattern makers is amazing. I remember spending a lot of time in the local fabric shop looking at “Big 4” sewing patterns and that was all I would sew. Now I very rarely sew from them. I also went through a vintage pattern phase. I would find lots of lovely patterns while I was traveling and couldn't help but buy them. I learnt to pattern draft about 15 years ago and since then I have drafted a lot of my own patterns. Some of my favourite pattern designers are Merchant and Mills, Pattern Fantastique and Grainline Studio. I have definitely started sewing more 'basics' - T-shirts, jeans, jackets - in recent years, as opposed to multiple fancy dresses. I think is a reflection of my life changing, both work and personal.

NH: There was a time that skills like sewing, and knitting, and crochet, and cooking, were called "the domestic arts", were taught in schools and were mostly practiced by women in the home. These days such courses are rarely taught in school, and "the domestic arts" can sometimes be seen as less important than other pursuits. I'm guessing you'd reject this trend, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this! 

FP: It's hard to get a good gauge on this because so many people, mostly women, throughout my life have practiced 'the domestic arts'. It has always been a normal thing to do, and often a part of everyday life. In my life it is almost those who don't make that are in the minority. I have an amazing group of friends who knit, sew, spin, dye. I taught my now 14-year-old step-daughter to sew and knit a few years ago. She still dabbles occasionally, though she enjoys cooking and drawing more. My two-year-old likes to sit in my lap and we knit together with my hands on hers. I will definitely encourage her interest. I think they are important skills to learn - clothing and food are a part of our every day, so it makes sense that we know how to make it it for ourselves.

Next, it’s Sally’s turn!

NH: Please tell us how you got started in the fibre arts - did you learn as children, who taught you, and what encouraged you to keep going? 

Sally Graham: I learnt to knit as quite a young child. I am the eldest of four siblings (two sisters and a brother) - we are all close in age and spent our youngest years on a farm on the South Island. Somehow my mother found time to sew and knit nearly all our clothes - often including matching clothes for our dolls. (All of the dolls’ clothes I still have.) Maybe she taught us to knit and sew at a young age so we could make our own! I do recall making  a few clothes for myself clothes at primary school - I think they probably quite roughly made but I did wear them out places.

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Sally knit this vest from natural dyed yarn she spun and dyed while on a course at Nelson Polytech 40 years ago.

In the 1960s and ‘70s girls still did sewing and cooking at 'manual'  and even though I attended a tiny country school, we went to the 'big smoke' Reefton once a month in the school bus for this, which was great fun (apart from the ghastly windy roads which made me feel carsick)! As a teenager I made many of my own clothes, mainly long dresses and skirts - supplemented by op shop buys. Unbleached calico was my fabric of choice, which I then dyed. In about 1979 i spent a year at Nelson Polytech doing a weaving and spinning course. It was fantastic and I learnt so much. I made so many things, most of which I gave away. Sadly I have not done any weaving since, mainly as I haven't had a loom, however this is something I am keen to try again hopefully soon. I am still spinning - after a lull for several years - and am now enjoying re-discovering natural dyes. [photos]

NH: Tell us about some of your earliest sewing / knitting / crafting memories...and do you still have any of the garments or other treasures you might've made? 

SG: I have quite a few knitted garments from my teenage years - nothing earlier. The vest in the photo was made using the wool I spun and dyed whilst doing the spinning course in Nelson. 

NH: Why is it important to you to make things for yourselves and your loved ones? Has this become more important over time? If so, why? 

SG: As a young mother in the 1980s I automatically sewed and knitted most of my children's clothes - cheap imported clothes were still not widely available and just about everyone I knew made their own. I also made many of my own and my husband’s clothes at this time. It is now so lovely to have some of these garments still around and my granddaughter able to wear them. Because Frances is such an accomplished sewer and knitter, I have not made much for Tiraki. I like to try and knit a little garment to give friends and colleagues at work for their new babies.

NH: Following on from that, what aspects of your crafts give you the most joy?  

SG: I love the anticipation of planning and starting a new project and then when it is completed if it works out how I was hoping it would it is really gratifying. (It's not always the case - and I've had many completed projects that have not just not been right.) I do enjoy knitting for other people although there is always a niggling worry that it won’t be quite 'right’.

NH: Tell us about your favourite patterns or styles - and how your choices may have evolved over time. 

SG: As my children grew up, I made less clothing for them. I became quite obsessed with needlework - particularly cross-stitch and tapestry - and produced cushion covers. (My favourite one is shown in the photo looking very tatty.) I also produced lots of pictures for the wall - many as gifts.  I started an Elizabeth Bradley rug over 20 years ago and have nearly completed it, however I have done nothing to it for over 10 years!! [Photo included] 

A few of Sally’s recent knits, including Kate Davies’ Paper Dolls, Petiteknit’s Balloon Sweater, Marie Wallin’s Orkney cardigan and the Aileas cardigan by Isabell Kraemer.

When Frances started getting into knitting she introduced me to the world of Ravelry and all the wonderful independent knitting pattern makers and yarn dyers. Previously one went to the local wool shop and 'put aside' an approximate amount of wool, which was great as it meant you did not have to buy more than you needed - and more importantly didn't run out! Also I only used to buy wool for the project I was working on and did not have a 'stash' like I do now! Knitting on circular needles was rare - nowadays that is my go-to. However I knitted my fair isle Marie Wallin cardigan on long needles in the traditional way doing back, fronts and sleeves, and it was nice. There seem to be so many techniques for casting on and off, shaping etc that I never knew of previously - it's a lot to learn, thank goodness for YouTube. I love knitting with a lot of detail - I get bored with rows and rows of stocking stitch. I think my favourite is fair isle. I would love to go to the Shetland Islands some day.

NH: There was a time that skills like sewing, and knitting, and crochet, and cooking, were called "the domestic arts", were taught in schools and were mostly practiced by women in the home. These days such courses are rarely taught in school, and "the domestic arts" can sometimes be seen as less important than other pursuits. I'm guessing you'd reject this trend, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!  

SG: Like I said at the start I did sewing and cooking at school once a month in form 1 and 2. It was girls only then, and I think boys should definitely have the opportunity to learn these skills - it should be compulsory - especially learning to cook as I get that sewing is not for everyone. I love seeing so many young women (and some men) taking up knitting and sewing. I am so happy that Frances has developed such a passion for knitting and sewing and she now helps me when I can't  figure something out! I am very proud of her, she has a lovely group of friends who get together regularly for knit nights. I think that fibre arts are definitely alive and well.

The gallery below shows a selection of Sally and Frances’ creations, including Frances’ beautiful Tamarack jacket with hand quilting and Sally’s stunning needlepoint.

Anki Josefsson: Using The Assembly Line to inspire sewists around the world

Newtown House’s customers have voted with their purchases and made The Cuff Top the most popular Assembly Line pattern we offer - by a country mile.

Anki Josefsson is the director and very creative mind behind The Assembly Line pattern company. From apron dresses to cuff tops and “almost long trousers”, the clean designs of The Assembly Line have made fans of sewists around the world. We wanted to hear more about the backstory of The Assembly Line, so Anki kindly answered a few questions for us.

NEWTOWN HOUSE: Please tell us how you got started with The Assembly Line  ... and what was the work you were doing before you started it? How old were you when you learnt to sew? Have you always had a wide creative streak?

The Tulip Dress is just one of the terrific, versatile patterns offered by The Assembly Line.

ANKI JOSEFSSON: The Assembly Line was founded in spring 2017. I have previously been working as a copywriter and creative director in different companies (shoes, children's clothing etc) and for many years I have "co-run" my own business within interior accessories with a friend.

I learnt how to sew from a very young age. And my mother ran a fabric store in the basement of our house so there was no lack of material. All children in Sweden have sewing classes in school so that's where I learnt even more. And in my teenage years I believe I made the clothes for every party I was attending...not always beautiful sewing but creative garments! :)

NH: Where did you get the idea for The Assembly Line, and how challenging was it for you starting out? And where does the name come from?

AJ: The idea came from my urge to sew but not (ever) finding the patterns I wish for. I had several weddings and anniversaries to attend and I wanted to make my dresses for those occasions. I have been sewing a lot but I'm not a trained pattern maker so I usually have to buy the sewing patterns. And also, I really like the simplicity and quirky details that I can find with many Swedish brands that sell ready-made garments but haven't been able to find that kind of sewing patterns on the Swedish market. 

The garments should be easy to create (even for a non-professional!), with a guaranteed high-end result. No more unfinished sewing projects in the closet!

The name alludes to customers being invited into the production chain (and fortunately ’line’ also means a collection within the fashion industry).

NH: Your patterns are composed of classic shapes and flattering silhouettes that will suit people whose skills are still developing. What's the one big message you'd want to give people who are trying to get started in sewing or other creative endeavours? 

AJ: Don't take it (or yourself!) too seriously, there is no wrong or right - it doesn't have to be perfect! Just do it. Swear if you must, take a walk and cup of coffee and then get back on to it. 

NH: How do you spend your days, these days? 

AJ: Trying to juggle a small business takes all day. I spend most of my days in the studio taking care of orders, planning for new garments and photo shoots, communicating with customers and retailers. Try to squeeze in a bit of marketing as well. 

NH: What inspires you? And which aspects of your work do you most enjoy? And how do you power through the less-fun parts? 

AJ: People inspire me. Love being in a city and just looking at people. There are so many styles and personalities! Fashion is all about self-confidence, I think - believe in yourself and what you're wearing and it will all look fab!

Nature also inspires me. Love being on top of a mountain or near the ocean. Or hiking in the forest. Peaceful!

Of course it is the creative process that is most fun: planning for new garments, sewing. It's also an ego boost to get positive responses from all those fun, talented, creative dressmakers out there.

The less-fun parts? I just do them. Most often first thing, saving the goodie parts as a reward.  

NH: What is ahead for you and The Assembly Line? 

AJ: I'd love to make a collection for all those sewing men out there. 

NH: Businesses like yours are very inspiring for people who are hoping to embrace the ideals of slow fashion - either by making their own clothes or buying one-off, handmade garments. Can you tell us a bit about your approach to slow fashion, and perhaps a bit about the change you hope to see as a result of people starting to really grab hold of these concepts?

AJ: I believe that awareness is the key. To sew one’s own clothes is a conscious choice, both for the person and the planet. Therefore my approach or the aim with The Assembly Line is to attract not only the people that already make their own clothes but also the ones that hitherto overlooked sewing as an option to the ready-made garment. 

To do this I also think home sewing needs to be taken to another, “cooler" level - to attract young people, old people, men and women. There should be something for everyone. And it has to, for real, be an alternative to the ready-made garments found on the High Street.

(I have to tell you that in Sweden we "crown" a yearly Christmas gift; i.e. the gift that is seen/guessed to be the most purchased gift that year. And in 2018, it was the second-hand garment. Isn't that fantastic!) 

NH: Tell us about your favourite meal - and perhaps if you are willing please share a favourite recipe! 

AJ: Oh, a bit addicted to this pumpkin and potato gratin.

NH: What is one thing about you that might surprise people?

AJ: I'm an extremely good at parallel parking. Always make it on the first try!

Looking for some inspiration from sewists around the world? Have a look at a few key Instagram hashtags here:

Cuff Top: #cufftop and #talcufftop

Apron Dress: #talaprondress

Almost-Long Trousers: #talalmostlongtrousers

Tulip dress: #taltulipdress

Tukuwool: Charting Tiina Huhtaniemi's journey in wool

Tiina Huhtaniemi is the force behind Tukuwool, a brand of gorgeous Finnish wool we are proud to stock. Tiina took some time to tell us about the evolution of her business, which like so many fibre-related journeys, started with an individual passion and grew outwards from there.

Newtown House: Please tell us how you got started knitting ... and what motivated you to firstly open up your yarn shop, and then to acquire Tukuwool? How challenging was it to take on a yarn company? 

Tiina Huhtaniemi: I learned to knit as a child. Both in school and from my mother and grandmothers. They all have been true knitters and knitted a lot when I was a child, grannies later, too. As a teenager I didn’t hang out a lot with friends, go to discos, etc. It was the knit, sofa and Sky Channel (those days before Netflix with “The Bold and the Beautiful” - oh my!).

So it all started from my dear hobby. First I knitted for my kids when they were small, then sold wool soakers, and suddenly my stash had grown to a small warehouse for an online shop. Then a small bricks-and-mortar shop together with the online shop, then they both got bigger and bigger. Tukuwool came into our lives when Pauliina started her business. We were retailers from the beginning and when she announced [she was] closing her business, I told her that I wanted to buy the brand. 

Yarn shop, our own brand and arranging a knit festival too is a big challenge. But I like them and the more interesting things are going on, the more it gets me going. Of course you need to delegate and have good people to work with - I don’t do all by myself. I have the best staff in the world and we make this together. 

NH: Can you tell us a bit about the sheep breeds that are used to make Tukuwool? What are the properties of their yarn?

TH: Tukuwool is a blend of Finnsheep and Finnsheep Texel crossbreed, around 85/15 percentage. Finnsheep is shiny, durable, soft, and elastic - usually called a mid-fine fibre. The average length of one fibre is 7cm. Texel is a bit rougher fibre, a very durable one. 

We are working on getting the yarn only from Finnsheep but that’s a long way away… 

NH: How would you describe Finnish knitting to people who might not be familiar with it? What are the most popular patterns in Finland using Tukuwool at the moment?

TH: Finnish knitters are known as very talented and fast knitters. They have really high technical knowledge and they learn to knit in school at early age. So everyone can knit! Popular patters are at the moment: Poet (Sari Nordlund) from Laine magazine and the Lotta dress (Marie Greene), also from Laine. The Haiku shawl by Johanna Ärje has also been popular. Johanna has also designed a collection called The Girl Who Said Baa! for Tukuwool. Worth checking! 

NH: It's a big job you've got, between managing your yarn company and managing the yarn shop - how do you balance those two demands?And how do you ever find time to knit?!

TH: It’s the hardest part, of course. Working hours are long, you don’t want to calculate them! This autumn I have focused on well being more and started to work out three times a week. It has been the best decision for a long time! I still knit every day in the evening - not nighttime anymore. Enough sleep is also important. 

NH: What inspires you? And which do you enjoy the most - knitting, developing yarn for Tukuwool and stock for the shop, or designing?

TH: Developing new colours, patterns and co-operation with other companies, designers, etc. is really inspiring. I’d like to design and knit more, of course. 

NH: What is ahead for Tukuwool?

TH: We are overwhelmed by the love and popularity our brand has got recently. We need to focus on speeding up the process and getting more wool and yarn for sure so that we could spread TukuLove more. We have wool in Finland, for sure, but the process of getting it into the skeins and to retailers’ shops is long and has too many steps at the moment. So this is what we are trying to solve. 

NH: Please tell us about your favourite meal - and if you are willing could you share a favourite recipe?

TH: Tricky one! The newest favourite meal for our whole family has been chicken wok from rice noodles. That way the kids (we have three aged 11, 12 and 16 - a nice teenage group!) eat more vegetables.

Short recipe:  Onion, carrot, cauliflower, garlic (whatever you have) are sliced into the wok and cooked in olive oil. Chicken slices are roasted/baked in a pan with oil and spices (turmeric, ginger, curry, garam masala, salt). Baked chicken slices are added to the wok. Cook rice noodles in boiling water for 2 minutes. Then add them to the wok. Add coconut milk and mix all together. Add sweet chili sauce, balsamico, salt, chilli, whatever you want according to your taste, and enjoy! 

NH: What is one thing about you that might surprise people?

TH: Hahaa… I was a teacher in kindergarten before starting a business. That is quite well known. Before that I also had a short period as a musician in a band, playing keyboards and as a singer. It was called Tarantella, and a few times Tiina & Tarantella if they wanted a woman mentioned. So music has been a big part of my life. I also performed a lot in theaters when I was younger and before being an entrepreneur. Sometimes I miss those days, to be honest.

A Maven at your (sewing) table

Sharon Mendham is the creative force behind the UK’s Maven Patterns, a company she set up as a creative outlet for her designs after a career that has included work as a pattern cutter, seamstress, and screen printer. As Sharon says, it’s all come together as a perfect launching pad for this labour of love. Sharon’s designs are classics - wonderful lines, easy to wear, and very versatile. Her obsession with detail and technique means the patterns are also packed full of instructions to help you get from fabric to garment in the most elegant way possible. We just adore her approach and hope you enjoy hearing more about her. If you’re inspired to try your hand at one (or all!) of Sharon’s lovely patterns,, we’ve got them in stock here.

NEWTOWN HOUSE: Please tell us how you got started with Maven. What was the work you were doing before you started it? How old were you when you learnt to sew? Have you always had a wide creative streak?

SHARON MENDHAM: Let's start at the beginning. I was brought up in a house where it was normal to make stuff. My parents were obsessive DIY-ers before that was an actual thing. One of my earliest memories is trying to find a red washing up bowl to match the kitchen tiles and chopping up a three-piece sofa to make it into a corner one. Me and Dad taking down a wall while Mum was at work. You get the idea. We couldn’t afford to buy the latest this or that, so we’d make do and work with what we had. And we didn’t really make stuff for the sake of it, not just to have more stuff. There had to be a point to it, and usually, it was a practical solution. I didn’t realise for years as a kid that other people bought stuff and paid people to do these things. It gave things a value because of the time they took, but they would have to function and look good to earn and keep their place. 

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I can’t remember when I learnt to sew, I think I just assumed I could because my Mum did. My mum worked as a sample machinist so it was just part of life. Apparently, I was always making dolls’ clothes or cutting something up. When I was at junior school we had a visit from the ‘big’ school and were told we needed to decide what we were going to do for a job when we left school. I was 11. I was most likely the only person that would take that seriously and was then on a mission to find my life’s work by September. And then one night there was a girl on telly wanting to be a fashion designer and that was that decided! I studied fashion at college and quickly realised pattern cutting was for me. I never wanted to be a ‘famous’ designer I just wanted to quietly make stuff that would be worn. 

After college, I worked as a pattern cutter for various suppliers to the High Street stores in the UK before eventually moving from London to Warwickshire. I wasn’t really learning anything anymore and it felt like there was just a constant churning out of clothes with no real thought behind it. Once in Warwickshire, I did a little bit of freelance work in the costume department at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. And then worked from home as a seamstress doing alterations (excellent work to fit around children!). I did a short two-day screen printing workshop that my friend was teaching - which ended up lasting four years. And got me involved in two exhibitions. I started a blog in 2007 to keep track of the creative stuff. As the kids got bigger I, alongside my alterations business, I got a part-time job in a bridal shop, not sewing but selling (dressing people up in tulle and tiaras is not a bad way to pass the time). I frequently turned up with blue fingers from screen printing in the morning. Now, it’s not obvious immediately, but all of these random little jobs actually gave me a lot of skills that I use now. I’ve been constantly fitting, altering, sewing, selling and providing customer service thanks to them.

NH: Where did you get the idea for Maven, and how challenging was it for you starting out? And where does the name come from? 

SM: Maven started as an idea just to sell patterns way back in 2012, I announced it on my old blog in January 2013 to try and make me do something with it, but I didn’t really know how. I didn’t really have a clue then about the Indie sewing pattern market and I didn’t know how to digitise a pattern. 

Actual quote from my blog, dated January 2013: “You see, I'm planning to make patterns and sell them. Patterns for ladies to make clothes that they'll actually want to wear. More than once hopefully, so you can make your favourite dress or whatever again and again. And again if you fancy. Revolutionary I know, clothes women want to wear, not clothes that make you feel like mutton dressed as mutton. It could catch on.... I've just got to do it now.... you know me always a procrastinator...........why do today what you can easily put off by faffing on the internet............”

That kind of sums up my whole philosophy, really! It’s the way I dress anyway - I only really ever made or bought something if I thought I’d wear it for a long time, so it just made sense to me. I make for purpose and buy for purpose too. I was very inspired by the William Morris quote, it was like someone else had seen my family at work: “If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” 

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Come October 2014, I’d made a few patterns and done a lot of research into creating PDF patterns and eventually invested and paid for the Pattern Workshop Course. This was the first time I’d actually invested in myself and in the business, so that was a major turning point. I built the website myself and pretty much did 12-hour days teaching myself Illustrator, fitting it around the alterations business and the bridal shop, until the following April when we released our first pattern, The Maria Apron named after my screen-printing friend - she’s actually a textile artist and wears it in her studio. The name Maven (rhymes with raven) means a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass timely and relevant knowledge on to others in the respective field. I took it to mean that we could all be our own experts in getting to know ourselves, and clothes are a part of that journey. Clothes really do reflect their owners and can give us confidence. I don’t think you need to know everything about sewing, but you can share what you know, learn from what others know and feel good about it, become an expert in what makes you happy! I really can’t be bothered with “You should wear this because you have that body shape,” for me it’s much more about “Wear what suits your personality.”

NH: In addition to pattern design, you also teach people to sew. What aspects do you enjoy most? And what's the one big message you'd want to give people who are trying to get started in these skills?

“It’s just a case of being honest with yourself - do you need all the things, bought or made, in all the colours? Probably not. ... We have to stop thinking short term happiness and strive for long term contentment.”

— Sharon Mendham

SM: I do really enjoy writing the sewing instructions for each pattern. They take an age to write, as I do all the illustrations too, but it’s actually one of my favourite parts. It’s constant problem-solving. I gained a good knowledge of construction working with some great machinists in London. They were really undervalued as they were not really seen, not glamorous, just women in the corner of the room. They were only too delighted to share what they knew, and it’s part of the reason I’m good at what I do - because I listened! My advice to a new maker would be: Don’t worry about making mistakes. It took me a frustratingly long time as a young pattern cutter to realise it was just a bit of paper, and you can quite literally stick it back together. But making mistakes is where you learn and grow. Keep a copy of the original pattern, just in case, and make a toile in a cheap fabric to practise and then enjoy the process!

NH: How do you spend your days, these days?

SM: Very little time actually pattern cutting and a lot of time tweaking stuff on the computer (which I actually love!). And I try and make sure there are some fun things, like exhibitions - you have to put stuff in to get stuff out. There is no life/work balance at all...and I’m the slowest producer of sewing patterns on the planet...but I’ve stopped worrying about it. That’s working well for me!

NH: What inspires you? And which aspects of your work do you most enjoy? And how do you power through the less-fun parts?

SM: It’s often a combination of fabric and problem-solving. It’s all a subconscious conversation with myself that I hadn’t vocalised until I started Maven. What gaps are in my wardrobe? How can I make a garment that's functional and easy to wear, interesting without being fussy, that is versatile and will offer longevity of wear. I often think there is a pattern cutter solution to clothing design which is based heavily on form, function and integrity of design. 

I do really enjoy developing a pattern, I could toile quite happily for an eternity and writing the instructions is very satisfying. The less fun parts - I ignore for as long as possible and then once I start just keep going until it’s finished!

NH: Businesses like yours are very inspiring for people who are hoping to embrace the ideals of slow fashion - either by making their own clothes or buying one-off, handmade garments. Can you tell us a bit about your approach to slow fashion, and perhaps a bit about the change you hope to see as a result of people starting to really grab hold of these concepts?

SM: It’s just a case of being honest with yourself, do you need all the things, bought or made, in all the colours? Probably not. But something that makes you feel great, in a colour that resonates with you - that will bring you joy for a long time. And if you love it, surely you’ll look after it, so it automatically becomes less disposable. We have to stop thinking short term happiness and strive for long term contentment. I usually only buy or make for purpose or with the certainty that I’ll wear or use the item for years. This will change depending on your lifestyle, I work from home and am happy to wear the same clothes so I naturally need less clothes than someone in a different type of job. I don’t think any one action will change the fashion industry and the way it operates overnight, but they will notice a change in consumer habits. If we buy and make more thoughtfully, I’m hoping the industry will slow down with the overproduction of their ranges and break the cycle.

NH: What is ahead for Maven? 

SM: Lots of plans...and more patterns! I’m very lucky that I work with Eve, my eldest daughter, now - she’s made printing and wholesaling the patterns possible. We’ve been sourcing fabrics so we can curate some kits and hopefully sell by the metre too. We are hoping to exhibit as some more shows next year. We’ve done a couple and it’s so lovely to chat to all the Makers that visit the stand.

All photos courtesy Maven Patterns

The Maria Apron - a Maven pattern

The Wendy Smock - a Maven pattern

The French Dart - a Maven pattern

The Kitty Dress - a Maven Pattern

The Rochester - a Maven pattern

The Barcelona Dress - a Maven pattern

All about Frankie & Ray

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Jo Dunsmuir and one of her many beautiful quilts.

Jo Dunsmuir is the multi-talented woman behind Frankie & Ray, her shop for sewing and quilting patterns and handmade clothes. We’re proud to stock her eminently wearable, breezy patterns, perfect for bringing a little colour into your handmade wardrobe or turning a wee snippet of woven fabric into nifty knickers! We caught up with Jo not long ago to learn more about how she got started, what she thinks about fashion and handcraft, and how to make a nice pizza.

Newtown House: Please tell us how you got started with Frankie & Ray ... and what was the work you were doing before you started it? How old were you when you learnt to sew, and quilt, and knit? Have you always had a wide creative streak?

Jo Dunsmuir: Frankie & Ray was born in the early 2000s by accident. I was a librarian by profession but was looking to indulge in something a little more creative and was completing a Diploma of Interior Decoration as a part-time student. I met and made friends with a fellow crafter, and it was Pia’s idea to try our hand at selling some of our makes on a shared stall at one of the handmade markets that were emerging around Melbourne at that time, and so with some moderate success at our first outing, away I went on this journey.

I couldn’t nominate an exact age when I learnt to sew and knit, but knitting definitely came first courtesy of my German-born Oma (grandmother). I took to it like the proverbial duck to water, and I’ve knitted on and off for my whole life. I find it a mindful and meditative thing to do, and I love the ability to handknit a gift.

I did a certain amount of sewing with my Oma, but really I learnt the basics of dressmaking at secondary school, like many women of my generation. I’ll be honest, the motivation for sewing during my teens was to be able to have new clothes at a lesser cost than store-bought. It was a time when manufactured clothing wasn’t comparatively cheap like much of it is today, which meant for our family, store-bought was for special occasions, birthday or Christmas presents, otherwise you (or someone in your family) made your clothes.

I came back to dressmaking during my professional life as a research librarian for a business newspaper, where I admired, but couldn’t afford, the beautiful suits and fabrics of the financial district uniform on my salary.

It was during this time I really honed my skills on making tailored clothing, and started to gain a deeper understanding of how garments are constructed – which led to playing around with drafting my own simple patterns. Beautiful quality fabrics were easily available at this time around Melbourne, from Clegs, from a few retailers who traded at the Queen Victoria Market, and from the haberdashery department downstairs at David Jones, amongst others. (I still have a coat I made from a mustard Italian wool gabardine purchased for a scary amount of money at the time from DJ’s.) It’s really encouraging to see this niche for good quality dressmaking fabrics being filled again by quilt/patchwork stores, but also by some specialty retailers.

Quilting has come only fairly recently, and my first quilt was made as a way to put some sizeable scraps of Liberty Tana lawn cotton from my dressmaking to good use.

My first quilt was cut with scissors, pinned and sewn haphazardly, and hand-quilted very wonkily. I often wish I could return to blissful ignorance to the ‘imperfections’ of that first quilt.

As for a wide creative streak, I’ve never thought of myself like that, but I am always keen to try something new. The excitement of learning a new skill is thrilling... or not. And that’s the beauty of trying things out. I’ve been longing to try ceramics and drawing/painting. 

NH: How challenging was it for you starting out? And where does the name Frankie & Ray come from?

JD: I began with accessories, including scarves and fabric belts, and some more homewares and decorator items (cushions, tea cosies etc), but it was inevitable that I moved towards clothing, because I’ve always loved clothes, and I really love beautiful fabric. 

Because Frankie & Ray truly began as a sideline hobby, I didn’t chase growth, or have a business plan, or even consider marketing. I really just followed my nose and it has absolutely grown in a very haphazard and unplanned way.  

The name comes from our two much loved pets of the time – Frankie, our incredibly beautiful, clever, and charismatic rescue Siamese cat, named after Frank Sinatra for her amazing blue eyes, and Ray, our first pet greyhound, who was a reject racing dog, and responsible for my becoming a crazy greyhound lady. Both are sadly no longer with us, but live on through the business name. 

My husband and I have always had pets, and we liked the idea of being able to offer a home to a greyhound from an industry that breeds thousands of dogs every year, many of whom are destroyed for lack of speed, or injury, or disinclination to ‘chase’. The breed has got under our skin, as it has for all adoptive owners, and we now have Henry, our second. 

Beginning at the time I did feels like a bit of a blessing, as the whole handcraft / makers movement was just beginning to experience a popular resurgence. Many makers I met at that time were new graduates from creative studies with a fresh take on old handcraft skills, and the market scene in Melbourne provided us with the perfect place to get our products to the public, and our names out there. I think this coincided with the beginning of the age of the internet ... blogging was kind of big back then, and the ability to sell online really enabled many makers to reach customers that would never have been able to find us otherwise.

NH: You've got a range of offerings through Frankie & Ray – gorgeeous handmade clothes, sewing patterns – but you also teach. What aspects do you enjoy most? And what's the one big message you'd want to give people who are trying to get started in these skills? 

JD: I love everything I do and consider myself very lucky indeed. What’s that old saying, if you find something to do that you enjoy, you’ll never work a day in your life? For me, I’m very lucky to balance my hands on making garments for sale with teaching and pattern-making. 

If I can pass on some skills, and some hints and tips on process and technique, and have a good time while doing it, then that’s perfect. I get a lot of satisfaction from seeing women go home from a workshop with a garment ready to wear, and the confidence to make more.

There’s a lot of emphasis out there on skills that are quite difficult to master. If you’re just beginning learning to sew, set your sights on something simple and achievable. When you’ve had some practice and a few successful makes under your belt, you’ll be ready and confident to move on to more complicated techniques. 

Never stop persisting. Failing is learning. Ask for help / advice. Practice makes perfect!

The Friday Shirt in a lovely coral linen

NH: How do you spend your days, these days?

JD: My days begin with a walk with our greyhound Henry and my husband, followed by breakfast and a quick(ish) scroll of my social media (read Instagram...I’m no fan of Facebook). Then I try to deal with any household chores that might need attention before packing orders and doing a run into town (6km to Apollo Bay) to the post office. Only then do I start in my workroom, which is downstairs in our house. That might be sewing, or it could be getting patterns ready for dispatch. If I’m struck with inspiration for something new, that inspiration often comes when I’m actually sewing. I work in quiet (no music or podcasts), and the act of working with my hands often allows ideas to present themselves. If it’s a promising idea I usually have to drop everything to try it out.

NH: What inspires you? And which aspects of your work do you most enjoy? And how do you power through the less-fun parts? 

JD: I don’t pay much attention to trends. I’m still very influenced by the minimalist fashion of the 1990s – my collection of Vogue patterns included many from Cavin Klein, Donna Karan, and Issey Miyake. Very often it will be a fabric that will inform what I make with it. What I mean by that is; that I buy fabric with no plans for it, so it may arrive and have to wait a while in my stash before I know exactly what I want to make with it. 

Trends are unavoidable, even in the handmade world, but I try my hardest to steer well clear. I believe clothes should be comfortable, made from the best quality natural fibres I can find for the job, and should last more than a single season. But perhaps most importantly, I want my garments to be able to be worn as part of everyday dressing. I don’t make anything I wouldn’t want to wear myself. Anything new has to find a place in my own wardrobe for fit, comfort, and style before I go any further with something.

I most enjoy the part of the process when a design becomes as good as I can make it, and the making itself becomes like second nature, when I no longer have to think too hard about what step comes next. Equal to that enjoyment is taking delivery of fabric that is better than I’ve expected. I’ve had deliveries that make me gasp with pleasure. There’s nothing quite like that feeling of not being able to wait to start sewing with those ones.

The Calendar Dress pattern makes a nifty shirt, too.

The flip side are the days I simply don’t feel like sewing but have stock to make. The beginning of the spring / summer season is always a bit daunting. For example, right now I have lots of new fabric, my designs for the season are well-formed and ready, but I have hours of sewing ahead of me to make stock. My motivation is always that I know how good I’ll feel when I have a reasonable amount of stock in hand. There’s only one way to get to that point, and that’s to do the work!

NH: Businesses like yours are very inspiring for people who are hoping to embrace the ideals of slow fashion – either by making their own clothes or by buying one-off, handmade garments. Can you tell us a bit about your approach to slow fashion, and perhaps a bit about the change you hope to see as a result of people starting to really grab hold of these concepts?

JD: Slow fashion is such a new concept, but I’m encouraged that people are working to make more considered clothing purchases or make their own garments as a way to counter the ‘churn’ of the modern fashion industry. My personal philosophy is to make every garment in my wardrobe work hard for as long as possible. I imagine I have a bigger wardrobe of clothes than most people, but every single garment in there must be worn, even if it’s only occasionally. I own clothes (some bought, some I’ve made) that are up to 20 years old. If you love it, wear it, pay no attention to trends, and keep your favourites. If you do succumb to a current must-have trend, then continue to wear that garment the next year, or repurpose the fabric it was made from.

By sewing their own clothing, I hope that people realise the effort that goes into garment construction – that ultimately everything is handmade, even in a factory environment, and therefore the value we as consumers place on garments needs to reflect and respect that.

I’d like to see clothing more treasured and enjoyed, that it’s good for more than a few wears, or even a single season. Once it’s done with, perhaps it might be re-used as rags, or cut up for quilting or other handcraft, or donated to charity or friends if it’s still in good condition.

NH: What is ahead for Frankie & Ray? 

JD: Your guess is as good as mine! I’ve never made plans, but I am still enjoying the ride! I am trying to slow down a little bit after many years of being lucky to be in this micro business. Sewing is a physical job, and I do hanker after a little more time to indulge in some other pursuits like gardening and cooking, and maybe learning some new hand skills. Travel is always high on my list of wants.

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Quilts feature in the family caravan, too.

NH: Tell us a bit about your trip last year to Europe. It looked fantastic. How long was it in the planning, and what inspired your choice of destination?

JD: Oh, Italy! We loved every single minute of it. We began to plan in earnest about a year ago, but we’ve wanted to go for a long time. My husband bought me a book for my 40th birthday (quite a few years ago!) called Salute!by Gail and Kevin Donovan, Simon Griffiths and Robert Castellani. Part cookbook, part travel book, it sparked a real desire to travel to Italy. I used to work with a woman whose family emigrated to Australia from Malta, so we’d always wanted to go there also. When we realised Malta is so close to Sicily, it was an easy decision to add it to our travel plan. I’m so glad we did because for a tiny country Malta packs a big punch. 

We began our journey in Zurich, which we loved, travelled by train through the Alps, and travelled Italy from north to south, ending in Malta. We made a decision to avoid some of the better-known destinations, which I have no regrets about. I’ve been asked which were my favourite things / places, and I cannot nominate one place over another. It was all fabulous. One highlight was being able to meet with my lovely friend (and talented knit designer) Anna Maltz and her husband, who travelled from London to meet us for a long weekend in Sorrento.

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With Henry the Handsome, the family’s rescued greyhound.

NH: Tell us about your favourite meal – and perhaps if you are willing please share a favourite recipe! 

JD: I love to eat, so to pick one favourite is almost impossible! In Italy, one of my favourite meals was a kind of antipasto picnic we shared with Anna and her husband. We visited one of the many ‘salumeria & macellaria’ (delicatessen) stores in Sorrento and bought a selection of cold meats, cheeses, bread, a few vegetables in oil and some olives. A bottle or two of wine, we took it all back to our hotel and set up on one of the tables on the terrace overlooking the Bay of Naples.

Pizza is a highlight throughout Italy – I think the secret is really good handmade dough, buffalo mozzarella, and a simple (and very sparing) topping of just one or two great quality ingredients.

I set out to eat gelato every single day – and I think I managed pretty well. The flavours are so much more diverse than what is generally available here in Australia. Like liquorice, and some particularly Italian flavours like fior de latte, which translates to ‘flower of milk’...a delicate cream like flavour, and another I had called profumo di Sorrento – ‘perfume of Sorrento’ – which was a mixed citrus flavour. Delicious!

With Italian pizza in mind, this is the recipe we use for pizza dough taken from Karen Martini’s book, Where the Heart Is.

Basic Pizza Dough.

400g plain flour

100g fine semolina

2 teaspoons table salt

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons (7g) dried yeast

Combine flour, semolina and salt in a bowl. Mix water, oil and yeast in a small bowl and stir to dissolve yeast. Pour water mixture into flour and mix until combined, and knead on a lightly floured surface for about 15 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic, but still quite wet and sticky.

Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with plastic film and rest in a warm place for about 30 minutes, or until dough has doubled in size. 

Makes enough for 4 pizzas.

NH: Finally, what is one thing about you that might surprise people?

JD: I am truly, totally, dreadfully disorganised when it comes to my paperwork. My income tax returns are always late!

All photos courtesy Jo Dunsmuir

It's a community thing

Helga’s Wool and Honey: a stunner

Yesterday we took a slice of Newtown House to Prefab’s festive Christmas market. We had a blast talking with people and watching them respond to our unique offering - cast-iron cookware, glasses, table linens, copper pans, knives - and yarn? And sewing patterns? YES we say, we are about the homemade and the handmade.

We walk in both worlds - proudly sourcing homewares made with care and helping people who want to share in the home crafts of knitting and sewing while supporting independent yarn producers and pattern makers.

It’s probably safe to say that there isn’t a copper pan community, or a linen tea towel community, in the same way there’s a knitting and sewing community. And what a community it is. Fibre folk are just different. 

Recent months have brought this home to us in so many ways. Much of the year has been spent with Nick facing up to a cancer diagnosis and the resulting surgery and months of chemotherapy. We’re nearly to the end of this hard slog, just in time for Christmas. For obvious reasons we have put our focus, and limited time and energy, into things close to home. So, developments here in Newtown House land have been slower than we’d have hoped.

It’s also meant I’ve had to do something I am so loathe to do. I asked for help. With a slow knitting output at the best of times, there was no way I was keeping up with my internal wish-list of samples knit up in the beautiful wools we stock. They’re unusual for New Zealand, which means it’s even more important to us that people can see, and touch, and understand, the qualities of these yarns. I’m also keen to sew up some sample garments from the patterns we stock, but again - limited time!

Setting up…tubs of yarny goodness in hiding.

We all know there’s nothing like seeing yarns, and fabric, and garments, in real life. Pixels can only tell you so much, and they are absolutely silent on how things will feel against your skin, and how the yarn will go through your needles. 

So I emailed my knitterly friends and asked: Would you mind helping me with some shop samples? I was so embarrassed to do this - it was like admitting defeat. And I almost cried at the responses. YES. YES with enthusiasm, even. Everyone was in agreement that not only should these be shop samples, but they should be things that we could wear. 

These magical things happened:

• A day before the Christmas market, at Knitting Ladies Lunch, Helga was doing a show and tell of the beautiful Wool and Honey jersey you see here. She had just finished it, using Tukuwool she’d bought from us just a few weeks earlier. It is utterly, glowingly gorgeous. She handed it over the table, along with a pair of socks she’d made from Rosa Pomar’s Mondim. Take them, she said. I protested. Come on, she said, summer’s coming. Keep them until after the Unwind knitting retreat in Dunedin, in March. I won’t need them until then! Put them in the shop, take them to shows, do whatever you want. People need to see what it’s all about. So the jersey and the socks went to the Saturday market with us and had pride of place with the yarn we’d brought. As I told Helga later, I could have easily sold her jersey at least five times. But as knitters know, this kind of thing is priceless.

• Another friend said of course I could have the things she’d made using our wool for shows. 

• People also offered to knit things from scratch. Which then turned into very jolly conversations about patterns, and yarn, and Knitting Schemes. These kinds of talks are just the BEST.

• Sue said, let’s do some more socks. Not for me, I said, looking at the ground: I’ve got big feet. (One reason I have never made a pair of socks!) What came back was basically, bollocks, put your foot on a ruler and we will make it work. 

• At lunch I handed Sue a skein of Biches et Bûches Le Gros Lambswool for her to make a hat. Less than 24 hours later she was at the market with a nearly finished hat, the Antler from Tincanknits. She pulled it out of her bag and we popped it onto Nick’s head to check whether she could start the crown decreases. Yes, it was time. It’s probably blocking now. Who am I kidding, it was probably blocking an hour later.

• Another friend popped by our stand and said she was looking forward to what I’m now calling Project Shoppe Sample. When I thanked her, she looked at me with a smile and said, “Honestly, it’s just nice to be able to help.” I almost cried again. (I’d like to blame the exhaustion or too much coffee or both, but.)

So where does this leave us? It’s oft repeated life advice, and perhaps because of this it’s become trite, but I believe we forget it at our peril: People like to help. Don’t be afraid to ask for it. And if you’re a knitter, it won’t be long until you’re swimming in the handknits — figuratively and literally, you will be buoyed up by wool. It’s just one of the many things that makes this community such a special one, and one we’re so grateful to be a part of.

Biches & Bûches: Family, creativity, and beauty

We are thrilled to stock the lovely, lovely wool from the mother and daughter team of Biches & Bûches. From an atelier in Burgundy, Astrid Troland and her daughters, Caroline and Louise, weave a magic spell of colour and pattern that has captivated many knitters. The yarn is spun in Scottish mills before coming back to France for sale. Their wide colour range means Biches & Bûches is perfect for colourwork - and it’s at home in delicate shawls, or knit up into hats, cowls, mittens or jerseys. The range goes from fingerweight lambswool to a bulkier, Aran weight, with blends of lambswool and silk and lambswool and cashmere also on offer.

We caught up with Astrid recently to hear more about how she got started on her Biches & Bûches journey and what might be next.

Please tell us how you got started knitting, and about the work you were doing before you started Biches & Bûches? Where did you get the idea for Biches & Bûches, and how challenging was it to start a yarn company? Where did you find the link to your Scottish mill?

As for many of us, it was my grandmother who taught me to knit. And to count. Those were the two most important things to know for a girl, in her opinion. I knit every day from when I was about five or six years old, and I was lucky to live in Denmark because school days are very short, so we had the whole afternoon off and could spend time doing sports, a lot of different activities and I would of course also be knitting a lot. I have always preferred knitting in wool and other natural qualities with a lot of beautiful colours.

As for my education and working situation, I am a trained translator and I have had my own translation company for more than 20 years. For some time in the beginning, I worked in the south of France, but I soon realised that working away from home was difficult with two little girls so I decided to have my office in our apartment so I could take care of Louise and Caroline and still have a job. I was very lucky that this was possible. I actually still work as a translator, and I still enjoy it.

The beginning of Biches & Bûches was long underway. It was back in 2012 that I started to think about and knit some designs and began writing patterns. Then I re-knit the designs and adjusted them so they were easier for others to knit. It is a different approach when you make a design just for yourself or if it is going to be published and understood by others, in different sizes, so I had to train myself to think about knitting in a whole new way.

Slowly the idea of selling yarn and patterns took form, but it was only several years later that it really became a company. It was a big step to evolve from having a project I loved to start showing what I did to the world. So many ends had to come together to be able to sell my design ideas. It was very exciting, and it was absolutely fundamental to work with Caroline on this. She is young and has a different and more artistic background than I have, so she sees things differently.

Caroline had just finished her studies to become a photographer when we spent a whole summer constructing the idea behind and the website for Biches & Bûches. Caroline is doing the writing, communication and the photos (except for the Instastories, where I mostly show my daily mood).

For the yarn, I was sure that I wanted many colours. The original idea was to have some Norwegian wool, but it wasn’t possible so when I found our Le Petit Lambswool, I thought that it would be perfect for colourwork and my design ideas. It is a natural yarn, very easy to work with, and the quality of the yarn is very high. I’m still very happy with my choice and today, we have four yarn qualities: Le Petit Lambswool, Le Gros Lambswool, Le Cashmere & Lambswool, and Le Silk & Lambswool.

When did you move to France, and what motivated you to make that change? 

Since I was a little girl, I have always been fascinated by France and everything French. When I was 18, I lived with a family in France for a year and I just loved the atmosphere, the way they lived and — shortly, I loved everything about it. I kept going back to this family whenever it was possible, and one summer on my way back to Copenhagen, Denmark, to continue my studies after a summer holiday break, I met my future husband, who is also Danish and who was working in France. It was an easy decision to make the move to Lyon.

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Caroline wears a Biches & Bûches colourwork jumper.

How do you spend your days at the atelier?

I still work as a translator, so I often begin my days with my translation work, just to wake up. Although these past months, I work more and more with Biches & Bûches. There are so many things to do, like taking photos, packing orders, working on new designs, planning the yarn production — the time just flies away when I’m with Biches & Bûches. And when I get tired, I sit down and knit — that’s my quiet moment of the day. At the atelier, we have a garden and we enjoy seeing the nature change, the birds growing up and other small and not so small animals around us. Life is very quiet here, and a good place to grow new ideas.

What inspires you? And which do you enjoy the most - knitting, choosing colours, or designing? 

I think that everything can be an inspiration — a colour, a colour combination, the wool, the garden — it’s actually just a feeling inside you that you try to express through your work, so I feel that it’s a part of yourself that you show. It’s very personal, in fact.

I love thinking about colours, trying out new colour combinations. I like to see how colours that I’m sure will fit perfectly together just don’t match well once they are knit. It has always amazed me that you cannot tell in advance what colours will work together in a certain stitch pattern and combination. That’s a fascinating thing about knitting.

I’m someone who doesn’t really like to do things the same way twice, so when it comes to knitting, this is reflected in new ideas all the time. With the endless possibilities, I’d like to try out as many as I can — and this means many new designs.

And I do love to knit. I knit a lot…

What is ahead for Biches & Bûches? 

We have a design (Afterparty) that was published in Laine Magazine issue 6 at the end of September and some new designs that we will launch in the coming months. 

We now work with many lovely yarn shops around the world (like yours in New Zealand) and that’s a very special way of connecting with new parts of the world and get to know some of all the lovely knitters that live far from us.

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And then we have different events: For example in September, we participated in Fanø Knit Festival in Denmark; in October we had an event in Paris called Tricot Market with a small group of knitting and yarn friends; and in November we will be at the big CSF - Création et Savoir-Faire show in Paris. So it’s a busy fall season.

How important is it for you to be able to involve your daughters in this work? 

Our little family has always had the highest priority, perhaps because we live so far from where we grew up. We are very close, so it has been a great experience as a family with this project and of course, Biches & Bûches wouldn’t exist as it is if I were alone. To me, family is key.
But, on the other hand, I want Louise and Caroline to pursue their dreams and find what inspires them and to go their own ways. So, over time, the structure of Biches & Bûches evolves according to the current situation and I think that’s great, because we need new inspiration all the time and trying out new things. They are both adults now — Louise is 30 and Caroline is 26.

Finally, can you tell us about a favourite meal, or share a recipe?

I would like to share one of Louise's recipes when we are in for a special treat. (It’s a tartine.)

Photos: Biches & Bûches

Sliding through Slow Fashion October

We’re now well into Slow Fashion October, the annual celebration of slow fashion championed by the Fringe Association’s Karen Templer. 

(If you’re new here, by all means have a gander at our interview with Karen here. And check out her website’s segment on Slow Fashion October.) Here at the House we’re working our way through Karen’s prompts but given the general busy-ness of life, we are taking the “slow” part a bit literally.

One of the many things I admire about Karen is her unrelenting focus on the sustainability of her own wardrobe - she is constantly editing and refining and, most importantly, *considering* what she wears, and in what possible combinations, and what might be needed to fill a gap. She is a skilled sewist and knitter, and has committed to building and maintaining a slow wardrobe. Documenting her practice is key to this.

I admit I’m a serious fan, and that I take great heart by following her journey. My own skills can’t keep pace with my aspirations, but with practice, I’m slowly getting better. This is thanks in no small measure to the seemingly endless fountain of learning and support available both online and from my lovely knitterly (and sewing) pals.

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The opposite of restraint: Pieter Claesz, Still Life with Peacock Pie (plumage, for pity’s sake!!!), 1627, National Gallery of Art.

When it comes to what I’d like to make, though, I have the absolute worst case of buffet eyes. I want to make all the things, and now. A few sweaters, yes - I am short on cardigans and jumpers. I could do with some skirts and dresses, especially in lighter fabrics now that summer is on its way. (Even though summer in Wellington often means the jerseys go over the dresses and atop the skirts, and you nearly always could do with a scarf.) I’m also a natural magpie - so I’m constantly striving to stay focused on the projects I have on deck rather than the next new shiny thing. 

The truth is I have a very busy and often exhausting full-time job, in addition to the joy that Newtown House is as No2 job. And I am not a particularly fast sewist or knitter. It is time, as a great friend of mine would say, to make room in my reality for the reality.

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My Nuuk: Yes, it’s time to snip the ends!

This is where the thoughtful approach that Karen - and other attentive makers like her - takes really comes to the fore. She is unafraid to take her time. To get it right. To go slowly, with purpose. To fix things when they’re not right. To understand fit, and fabric, and drape - and to stop if she’s gotten something wrong, and remedy it. To pursue an idea to its conclusion - which often means acquiring new skills or experimenting along the way. She is fearless about undoing, about ripping back, about making it right. That she documents this so openly is a great help to people like me, struggling along in the weeds silently cursing our efforts. (Or maybe it’s just me? Please don’t answer if I’m alone in this - but if I’m not, comments below please!! I want to hear all about it.)

So the other day, as I cast on for my long-anticipated Nuuk sweater in a buttery browny Beiroa yarn from Rosa Pomar, I felt the familiar feeling of wanting to race through so I could get onto the actual knitting. Instead, I paused. I got out a book. I thought about my cast-on. I took my time. I enjoyed what I was doing. I decided to just slow the heck down, give my brain time to absorb some new skills, and make some notes along the way. 

I may never reach the heights of you multi-craftual, seriously gifted folks in the blogosphere and on Instagram but I’m grateful for what you are showing me: that there’s great pleasure to be had in slowing down, and in learning and then applying new skills one step at a time. 

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Fun with fluff: Tukuwool and Hesperus (silk / mohair) combine into a fabric that’s like knitting a puffy cloud.

So as we march through Slotober and celebrate being deliberate and thoughtful in our making, and in building our wardrobes, I’d like to thank Karen for taking the time to share her journey with us, and for encouraging us to be unafraid to dive in, go slow, and make beautiful things. 

Me? I’ve finished the Nuuk and I’ve barely taken it off for the last three days. Because I am these days a mostly one-WIP kind of gal (which has its perils, as I’ll talk about later), I’m now into the joy of casting on my Ranunculus, which I’m making from a combo of Tukuwool and Hesperus, a lovely silk mohair dyed up by the lovely Nikki at Dark Harbour Yarns. (With a major tip of the hat to the inspiring Melissa at Espace Tricot in Montreal, whose Ranunculus inspired this one.)

The sewing WIPs are yet to be decided. That’s a task for the rest of the (long, Labour) Weekend! 

Karen Templer: Going behind The Fringe Association

Karen Templer

Karen Templer came to knitting as a fully fledged adult, but the craft grabbed her straightaway and has quickly turned into far more than a pastime. If you subscribe to our newsletter, or follow us on Instagram, you’ll know we often refer to Karen’s beautiful website, Fringe Association, for all manner of reasons - because she champions, lives and breathes slow fashion, because she regularly hosts exiting make-alongs that include sewing, knitting and crochet, because she is incredibly generous about everything she’s learned along the way, and because she has a wonderful magpie eye that gathers and takes notice of beauty everywhere. And that’s not to start on the range of wonderful tools she offers in her online shop, Fringe Supply Co - a range that includes the cult-status Fringe Field Bag for taking your needlework outside with you. (Check out the latest edition of the Field Bag, a collaboration with print artist Jen Hewett, if you're curious.)

One of Karen’s initiatives is the #Summer of Basics, in which she encourages makers to think about stocking their wardrobe with three basic pieces over the three (Northern Hemisphere) summer months of June, July and August. Here in the Antipodes, though, we see no reason why we can’t hop on this delightful bandwagon. It may be winter, but there are still basics that are required! Jumpers, merino tops, trousers, warm skirts, socks, beanies - the list goes on and on. (Here's: more about the SoB.) Here's what's happened on our own #SummerofBasicsAntipodesStyle,

This is a long way of saying we’ve been long-distance fans of Karen for a long time, so we were thrilled when she said yes to a wee interview. Enjoy.

How did you come to start Fringe Association? What was the journey that brought you to opening up the shop, and starting the website?

I learned to knit in October 2011, when I was living in Berkeley and working the tech world in San Francisco. I was taught by friends while we were visiting Nashville, and thought they were the only people I knew who knitted. So I started the blog, which came to be known as Fringe Association, two months later, and it was a way to keep in touch with them and document this incredible new addiction and hopefully make some knitting friends. I pretty quickly started brainstorming (read: fantasising) about the yarn store of my dreams, which didn’t seem to exist in the real world, and in the course of all that imagining came the idea for the webshop, Fringe Supply Co, which launched as an online pop-up shop for the holidays in 2012.

How has your thinking evolved over the last five-plus years you've been in business?

In too many ways to begin to articulate! My thinking evolves every single day — about what I’m doing and why, what kind of business I want Fringe to be, what kinds of clothes I want to make for myself. Blogging and owning a small business are both a nonstop growth experience.

Do you think people are growing in their understanding of slow fashion, and the need to consider how their clothes are made, and to consider making their own? Are you starting to see evidence of a shift?

Absolutely, yes. When I first started knitting, which got me interested in sewing again (not having done so for a few years), there was definitely a conversation happening among a lot of really thoughtful, tuned-in people, but you had to sort of pick up on it and tune in yourself. Maybe it’s just because of the community I’ve embedded myself in, but now I feel like it would be very difficult to be a DIY clothes-maker, on the Internet in any way, and not be exposed to the issues and concerns at hand.

And beyond the DIY community, there are so many more brands (or sub-brands) being formed around slow fashion and sustainability, discussions happening in magazines and on public radio, and so on. I get catalogs in my mailbox now from sustainable-fashion companies, and that was not happening even five years ago. I’ve even read articles about the demise of high-street fashion brands wherein the journalist will cite a rise in consumer awareness and demand for transparency as among the many reasons a fast-fashion brand might be struggling. It’s definitely gaining so much traction and being amplified all over the place.

What surprises you about your business, and about the kind of responses you get to your work on the website?

I remember seeing Kellie Pickler, former American Idol runner-up at the time, guest-hosting on The View one day (several years ago) and when she came out onto the stage and the crowd cheered, she mused out loud, mostly to herself, “Crazy to think people find ya interesting.” And I think of that a lot. It’s pretty amazing to have people show up every day wondering what you’re thinking about or making or selling. I take it really, really seriously, especially with the shop. I never want to sell anyone anything they don’t find beautiful or useful, or that’s disappointing in any way, so I am incredibly choosy and have extremely high standards, because it’s a pretty astonishing thing to have people have that kind of trust in you.

Like many of your regular readers, I was riveted by the discussion of gansey sweaters [link: https://fringeassociation.com/2018/04/17/what-i-know-about-gansey-origins-with-deb-gillanders/] on the blog recently - why do you think stories like that strike such a chord with people? 

I just think we’re all so disconnected from everything — we’ve collectively lost our sense of history and origins, and we outsource everything. We live in a world where we don’t know where our food comes from, how our clothes are made, how to fix anything for ourselves (be it engine trouble or a hole in a sock). When you knit, you’re not only taking back the making of your sweaters or whatever, knowing at least where these things come from, you also kind of can’t help but be aware of the fact that you’re participating in this incredibly long tradition, this thing that has been passed along from one knitter to another for centuries, being improved upon and reimagined all along the way. And then when you find out there’s also this whole other level of history to it — that types of sweaters or mittens or stitch patterns or techniques aren’t random; they come from specific people and places and have evolved or been lost in whatever ways — it just adds a whole extra level of fascination and connection to what you’re doing. A sweater you’ve seen all your life and never thought anything about suddenly has all these layers of history and meaning.

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One of Karen's many brilliant tricks is to document her seasonal wardrobes, both as a way to spot gaps that might need filling and to pull together new looks for the months ahead.

Some people might look at your website and wonder, why is it important for people to chronicle their own journeys on the slow fashion road, and in such detail? And why does it resonate with people? (I know the answer I'd give if asked, but I'm curious to hear yours.)

I’d actually love hear your answer! I enjoy documenting things — whether it’s how I shaped a raglan or how my thinking about my closet was shaped — and I enjoy reading how other people document what they do. I learn from other people’s triumphs and mistakes and points of view, and I hope people can take something away from mine. I don’t always know what I think (or what I think I think) until I’ve written it down and had it challenged by someone else. It’s all part of the growth experience!

How do you keep yourself motivated and organised - you have the same 24 hours as all of us, but you do seem to accomplish quite a lot in your days and weeks!

Oh, gosh. I have at least two full-time jobs, right?, and the only way I know to do them is to do them — to just keep going! People ask me all the time how I manage to write a blog post every weekday and my answer is that if I didn’t do it every day — like showering and eating and breathing — I wouldn’t be able to do it at all. It just has to be part of my routine. And I know it does seem like I get a lot done, and I do — by necessity — but what I see from where I sit is all of the things that don’t get done every day, because every single to-do list is inherently insurmountable. But that’s just the nature of owning a small business. You have to be willing to show up every day knowing your to-do list is going to beat you, but that you’ll be back again tomorrow giving it your all! I mean, you basically have to be a crazy person — a highly organised crazy person — which I apparently am.

What would people be surprised to know about you?

That I know anything about Kellie Pickler or The View? I don’t know — I’m a polymath and a reasonably complex individual, but on the Internet I think I might appear to be just some lady who is obsessed with clothes. In real life, I’ll talk to you about books, current events, religion, gardening, pop culture. Would people be surprised to know I’m more interesting than I appear? lol

What's your absolute favourite garment in your closet? And what are you most looking forward to making next?

Generally my favourite thing in my closet is whatever I finished most recently, so right at this moment it is the Elizabeth Suzann half-finished sample-sale jacket I just turned into the best vest imaginable. And what I’m most looking forward to is whatever is in the pipeline that is the most challenging, or makes me the most nervous. For Summer of Basics this year, I think I’m going to make a pair of proper pyjamas — you know, with the piping and everything? Maybe even in a slippery fabric! And I’m pretty nervous and excited about all of that.

Thanks, Karen - we really appreciated your generosity and can't wait to see how your #SummerofBasics projects turn out! All photos by Karen Templer.

A notebook like Karen's can be invaluable if you're wanting to document, and plan, your wardrobe.

Our #SummerofBasics, Antipodes style

We’re in the last month of #SummerofBasics - or as I am calling it, #SummerofBasics, Antipodes Style - and I’ve not finished one garment.

If you’re not familiar with the Summer of Basics, it’s a superb online challenge developed by the ever-creative Karen Templer, who we profile here, in which people commit to making three basics over the three North American summer months - June, July and September. “Basics” is defined by the maker - if polka dots are your idea of basic, so be it. I’d be right there with you.

So whilst I haven’t finished a thing, I do have the following underway:

It's gone a lot of places, this Anker's cardigan

My Anker’s Cardigan, knitting up in Garthenor No2, with just one and a half sleeves to go. I opportunistically found some lovely ribbon for the button band the other day, but still need to source buttons. I am thinking this will be a very jolly moment indeed. I’d be stoked to finish by the end of August. This may actually be possible.

The star-crossed plaid Camber dress from Merchant and Mills. I’ve decided it actually needs to be underlined to both give it a bit more body and to ensure it’s not entirely see-through.* This is what happened: Once I’d actually cut into the fabric and studied it carefully, I realised it was far too lightweight (and sheer!) to be worn without a slip or unlined. If ever there was a fabric face-palm moment, that was it. Sheer plaid - who would’ve thought that was a thing? And yet, I am so in love with this pattern that I’m just going to plow on because it will be, if nothing else, great practice at getting all of Carolyn Denham’s clever construction techniques down. Camber dress No1 was not nearly enough.

Another LB pullover from the fab Tara Viggo (@papertheory) in lovely striped merino - just the thing for the last few weeks of winter. It has been cut out and only needs to be sewn up. Getting to the fabric shop for some cotton tape to stabilise the seams took another week of the precious 12 in the SoB, but such is life. Stable seams more important than droopy knits - lesson learnt from my first LB pullover in a heavy woollen knit, where a bit of interfacing would’ve helped firm up the turtleneck. Rookie mistake!

So, not much progress then.

But.

We’ve had a scary challenge on the health front here at the House, which we talked about a bit in our newsletter the other week. The gist is: we are OK, but life is all about doing what’s doable in the moment these days. Sometimes that means just dreaming about all the things that will be done when life gets a bit easier. Sometimes it means half an hour snatched to knit away on the endless sleeves of the cardigan, or stealing some time to trace out a pattern, write a blog post, bake some cookies, go for a run, tend to a sourdough loaf. It’s a stressful time, for sure, and we are so grateful for the kindness of family and friends.

It’s a time full of learnings, some of them even really funny. For example, every knitter knows that if you’re going to be spending time at hospital, you better have your knitting with you. But it’s been interesting for this lifelong book lover to learn that sometimes - when you’re really pretty scared, for example, and you don’t know what’s going to happen next - it is impossible to “get lost in a book”. I’ve learnt that I need to do something with my hands instead, something diverting and attention-taking. Funny to learn something so essential now I’m in my fifth decade.

Plaid Camber dress on the cutting room floor - aka the hallway. Plaid, and virtually sheer. How did I miss that?!

So all in all, so far it’s not really been the wildly creative Summer of Basics we’d anticipated. Instead, I’m dubbing this year’s version the Summer of Getting Back to Basics. To going slow, doing what can be done, and being OK with that. Sometimes it’s very hard to do this, with social media parading an endless array of beautiful distractions produced by people with talent to burn, and seemingly ample time to lovingly document their journeys. I really enjoy looking at what all of you geniuses of the domestic arts do, but that is very much not our reality at the moment.

But I’m committed nonetheless to building a wardrobe of my own, halting though my progress sometimes is, because the rewards are so many and so manifold. They include:

Inspiration: We’re so fortunate to be living in a moment where it’s possible to be on this journey as part of a global community of makers and menders. There is so much creativity on show, and there are so many generous teachers who’ve taken the time to share their knowledge. (As a counterpoint, I don’t have to look too far back to remember me and the old Singer set up in my bedroom in the early 1990s. Just me and a sewing pattern, my fabric of choice and a hell of a lot of uncertainty. No, my mother did not really sew, nor did the significant women or men in my life. There was no help at hand, and there was no Internet. There was the Fabric Store, and there were Books, and there was Mail-Order Fabric. Does anyone else remember those days?)

Being conscious about consumption: There are plenty of garments in the world. We’re awash in them. Like most people I’m not immune to the siren’s call of beautifully made new clothes. But to make your own is one way to say “no” to an industry that would have us just buy more and more and more, with no regard to the impact the fashion industry has on people and the planet. Buying local is another way. As long as I’ve lived in New Zealand I’ve tried to buy close to home - along with our own making, we need local designers and manufacturers, and one way to support that is to vote with your feet, and your dollars.

Beauty: Let’s be honest, from as early as I can remember my eye has been drawn to the fabric, the fibre, the colour, the drape, the shape, the beauty of well-made clothes. That’s why I studied art history, that’s why I love fashion, and that’s one of the reasons I have, over most of my life and to varying degrees of success, tried to make my own clothes. Now I’m older I don’t feel the need to put that practice aside for something more “sensible” - to be able to do this is luxury to me these days.

So I’ve just lengthened out the SoB plans to last me the rest of the year. They include:

A project for Actual Summer

A Willow Tank: This week we wandered down to a jewel of a local fabric store, Stitchbird Fabrics. They stock more than a few lovely bolts of Nani Iro and I was keen to have a look - you know, just in case something might leap out. (Surprise: something did.) So I picked up enough pink gorgeousness to make a Willow Tank, along with the paper pattern, which I’ve been keen to try. It’ll be a great basic for actual summer, and it will be a brightly coloured joy to work on through this winter and spring. Because I will have to make a toile before I’m cutting into that!

A Nuuk jersey: I’ve chosen some of our beautiful Beiroa (No 409, which knits up into the most beautiful beigey, browny, creamy fabric) for this and have started swatching just for fun. I know it’ll feel wonderful on the hands and (bonus!) may come together relatively quickly! And it will be a marvellous basic over lots of things.

A Shakerag top. (The hilarious and talented Kay Gardiner knit one, and here's how she told the tale.) Because I realised I have four skeins of Jade Sapphire Sylph, a cashmere-linen yarn of much loveliness (and in the precise amount the pattern calls for), and this top would be a fantastic addition to the wardrobe. It's destiny.

A Box Pleat Dress from our new supplier, The Assembly Line. I have the perfect navy linen for this. No idea where I will find the time, but some things just need doing.

So who else is with me in turning the #SummerofBasicsAntipodesStyle into a long slide through spring and into our actual summer? I’ll be here working away, slowly, so feel free to join in!

---

*Giving the term “windowpane plaid” a whole new meaning! So it can be called The Windowpane Dress.

What Nell knits

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Nell Ziroli - wise counsel, fibre whisperer

Nell Ziroli is a knitwear designer, knitting instructor, and all-around knitting inspiration.

If you follow Mason-Dixon Knitting, you’ll see that she frequently pops up there with a wonderful, beautifully finished garment or an inspired take on a design that has captured a lot of attention.

See, for example, the variant she made on Kate Davies’ wildly popular Carbeth jumper. Nell continued the ribbing from the cuffs up the arm, and the result of this simple change (which is complex to execute - ask how I know) made for a lovely variant on an instant classic pattern. In Mason-Dixon’s Lounge, where knitters gather virtually to talk turkey about patterns, design, and any challenges (oh, there are always plenty of those), Nell works tirelessly to provide tips and support.

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Nell's Carbeth - a genius modification

A lifelong knitter, Nell lives in American state of Virginia, where she shares a house with her youngest daughter. When she’s not working on her own projects, she finishes other people’s (I like to imagine her as a knitterly version of a country doctor), and regularly takes on an even trickier challenge - fixing treasured (but possibly over-loved) knitted dolls. 

You can find her patterns including the elegant Roger cardigan (an example of which is here) and her latest summer stripy design in linen (Liminal) and lots more on Ravelry and on her website.

Tell us a bit about yourself: family, work, where you live, and the things you like to do when you’re not at work.

Well, I’ve been knitting for over 50 years.

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Details matter to Nell - like the Liberty fabric pocket she sewed into this Roger cardigan.

Currently I live in coastal Virginia, and I have three beautiful daughters and two grandsons. My youngest daughter Haley and I still share a home. She is quite helpful with this work - she tests some of my patterns and has taught me all I know about photography. My middle daughter, Melissa, and her darling boys also live in Virginia, but still too many hours away. My oldest daughter, Christi, is way, way out on the West Coast. They’re all wonderful women who I’m very proud of.  

Walking is one of my favourite things to do - I love to keep an eye on what’s growing, who’s living in the trees, and I’m on the lookout for quirky architectural things.  

Tell us a little about your knitting - when did you learn, who taught you, favourite projects. What draws you to knitting? Why do you think it's important to keep practicing these skills? 

My mother taught me to knit when I was eight or so. Somehow, with all of the moves we made, she managed to save two of my early knitting projects - a cover for my Girl Scout “Sit-Upon”, made with Red Heart “Mexicana,” and a funky little drawstring bag.  

Actually my family is/was very creative. My grandfather was an architect, both grandmothers had various crafts going, and my dad built delicate balsa and tissue paper airplanes that he would fly. So I’ve always been surrounded by makers.

In the ’70’s I had a pair of Levi’s cargo pants, which I fully embroidered, that I wish I’d kept - or at least documented. They were amazing.

I can’t imagine not knitting. And this is a great time to be a knitter! There are so many temptations; choices in yarn and designs and not to mention technique! 

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Wrapped in Cables, an elegant scarf pattern

Do you do other work apart from NellKnits?

Yes, I do! I have a part-time office job that is not at all related to knitting (however, knitting does occur there when it’s not busy). There’s also remote work for Mason-Dixon Knitting, moderating a few of their project forums and answering direct knitting questions.

I work at my local yarn shop, Baa Baa Sheep, one day a week, and teach there a few times a week, too. I also do finishing, assembling, blocking and loving on other people’s work through the shop (and through the mail).

Also, people send me Blabla knit animals to repair. Life is always interesting.

What does the online world / social media bring to this creative party? Do you think it has helped to spark people's interests in what's possible? 

I love the connection of social media, the backstories, trials and triumphs and sometimes intimate views of people that you admire (hey, they’re just like me!) and I think that it may cause people to take a closer look at what is beautiful and interesting immediately around them.  

To be creative is such a strong desire and need for so many people, and although it may sometimes seem that there is a bombardment of ideas and projects, social media allows you to view many examples of a similar design or concept, which may allow you to make the best choice of how to proceed with it.

Is there a possible downside in seeing too much "perfection" in people's feeds?

(Over) curation - it’s preciously inspiring, yet frequently an impossible goal.

Do you have a favourite knitting pattern? (One of yours or someone else's!) 

That’s a tricky question. I think I’ll have to say that the amazing Baby Surprise Jacket is an architectural marvel to knit. Elizabeth Zimmerman would have been an incredible person to have spent some time with.

As a longtime teacher of knitting, what are some common traps you see people fall into? Common mistakes? What's one thing people could do to really lift their game? (As in, pockets! Or good finishing skills!) 

The biggest trap is that students often think that they should get all of this now, and quickly. Keep it simple and pay attention to the details. I love little things that click and I appreciate symmetry.

Finally, a note: When Nell generously agreed to answer our questions, we also asked her to share a recipe and to suggest other people who might be keen to share their stories with us. It’s a “recipe” (very bad pun) we’re hoping to make a regular feature here at Newtown House, so if you know someone you think would fit the bill, let us know at hello@newtownhouse.co.nz. 

Betsy’s Scones

I love to cook - meals are generally simple with minimal ingredients. However, I love these in every variation.

You will need:

2 cups (280g) flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 to 3 Tbsp sugar, brown or white, depending on your preference and your additions

pinch of salt

5 Tbsp (70g) butter, cold

3/4 cup (170ml) buttermilk

Instructions: Stir dry ingredients together. Dry add-ins can be stirred in here. Cut or grate in butter.

Stir in buttermilk. Wet add-ins can be stirred into the buttermilk. Turn onto a floured surface. (I just plop it onto the baking sheet.)

Pat into a circle, and cut into sixths or eighths. Or top with seasoned fruit, fold in half and pat again; cut into six wedges.

Bake at 425 degrees F (220 degrees Celsius) for 12 - 15 minutes.

A few add-in ideas :

• Lemon zest + blueberries

• Sliced peaches with a few drops of almond extract

• Grated or diced apples + cinnamon

• Nuts

• Cheese + smoked paprika or cayenne

• Orange zest + pistachios

Photos: Nell Ziroli

Tara Viggo wants to help you build a wardrobe

Like a London taxi driver, Tara Viggo has The Knowledge.

And like that driver, her secret ninja power is a subtle but mighty one.

Tara Viggo knows how to translate the language of fashion - cut, fabric, drape - into the paper patterns fashion houses use to make beautiful clothes. She knows how clothes should fit, and what kinds of fabric would work best with a particular construction to make it most flattering. It’s knowledge - and an eye - that she’s spent years developing through sheer hard graft in London’s fashion industry.

Now, she’s turning that knowledge into patterns you can use to make simple, stylish, wearable garments at home. (And there’s not-surprising bonus, given her background: They have a style edge.)

Viggo, 35, is a Cook Islands-born, New Zealand-reared pattern cutter who has lived and worked in the London fashion industry for nearly 11 years. Last year, after a decade spent cutting patterns for designers ranging from the High Street to couture, she launched Paper Theory, where she sells straightforward patterns aimed at home sewers. Her goal? To enable people to build a simple, flattering, eminently wearable AND stylish wardrobe that puts an emphasis on sustainability.

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The Kabuki tee - as modelled by the designer

Paper Theory, which Viggo manages while still holding down a busy schedule of work for fashion houses, was born from a desire to have more ownership over her time, and as a way of getting the patterns in her head out into the world. After she had logged yet another late late night at work, Viggo’s boyfriend urged her to find a way to cut down on her punishing schedule and indulge her own creativity. She found herself thinking back to her childhood - and home sewing. “I remembered when I was quite small my mother would let me pick the patterns and she would make my clothes.”

But immersed as she was in the world of high fashion, and logging long hours, Viggo had virtually no idea of the renaissance of home sewing in recent years, fuelled in large measure by the internet. Blogs, Instagram, independent pattern makers, print-on-demand fabric companies, YouTube videos - it’s all there.

Viggo was staggered by what she saw, and spotted a gap for the kind of patterns she had in mind. The brand represents an extension of the direction she took her career a few years ago - towards sustainability and enduring style and away from fashion with a shelf life best measured in days. “There aren’t many of those pattern brands that have a sustainable edge and that’s something that’s really, really important to me,” she said.
 
Early in her career, after a couple of years working for fast fashion brands, Viggo found herself at a crossroads. She was upset about the high social cost of fast fashion - the well-documented stories about working conditions in some factories, the toll on the environment, the waste. She was ready to quit the industry altogether.

“I was going to leave fashion and I was going to become a landscape architect. And then I thought, actually, I can’t just leave this problem, because if I walk away the problem still exists, and I should do something that encourages this to get better. That was when I decided that sustainable fashion would have to be one of my biggest priorities.”

So she started working only for fashion brands that work with small factories and put an emphasis on ethics and sustainability. Then she took a big step in her personal life: “Last year, for New Year’s Eve, I set myself the challenge of not buying any new clothes.”

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Viggo at work in her home studio in London

It was a great experience, Viggo said - with benefits that included liberating her from thinking about shopping, and worrying about what she might be missing out on in the sales as the fashion seasons turned, for example. “The mind tax of shopping is quite heavy, and I hadn’t really noticed,” Viggo said.

“The biggest surprise was, I thought it would be a year of sacrifice and longing, but in the end I actually gained more than I gave up. I reclaimed a lot of wasted time and I gained a huge amount of freedom. Freedom from thinking about what I wanted or needed or how I could make my life better by acquiring ‘things’. I actually feel liberated from the hamster wheel of consuming, and it’s a perspective that has transformed the way I will think about shopping forever.”

Viggo also wants to use Paper Theory to help people manage the cost of building a sustainable wardrobe - because the retail cost of sustainable, organic fashion is still high.

“Sustainable fashion is great, but in England there’s quite a class problem. It’s expensive. Choice is a luxury, and not many people have the luxury of choice. They’re defined by their income, and to ask them to sort of contribute to making the world a better place when they’re already getting shafted is a big ask,” she said.

“I just wanted there to be an alternative choice. It would be really nice to have really clean, simple basics so you could just pop off and buy a metre of really beautiful organic fabric and put that into your T-shirt. And you could have it be not too hard to make, and build the basics in your wardrobe. You can still buy special pieces from whoever your favourite designer is, but it’s a nicer way to fill the gaps.”

Building a wardrobe of essentials is just one more way to gain some independence from the fashion merry-go-round and to indulge your own creativity.

“The cost of fashion is really high - the social cost, the true cost. The pricetag’s going down but the cost is going up. Even I find it difficult. It’s hard when I’m faced with a three-pound white T-shirt from H&M which looks the same as a white T-shirt from a sustainable brand which would be like 50 pounds. It’s tough.”

Viggo is staunch on the details, and ensuring that time spent sewing with them will be time well spent. She spends a lot of time looking at how clothes fit, both online and in her daily work, and this means she’s well aware of the importance of getting the things right.

“A lot of home sewers won’t see the finer fit problems, but to me they’re quite jarring,” Viggo said. “It’s not like going off to the shop and spending 40 quid on a T-shirt and if you don’t like it, you don’t wear it. You’ve committed an afternoon to fabric shopping and then two days to actually sewing something together and then for it not to look nice, it’s such a tragedy, I think.”

She continues: “I’m really precious about my time - I get really upset about people wasting my time, so I couldn’t ask that of somebody. For a lot of home sewers, their eye isn’t finely tuned enough to notice that the balance is a bit off perhaps, so they won’t see it.”

Viggo earned her stripes in the fashion world through hard work and determination: While studying fashion design at Otago Polytechnic in her hometown of Dunedin on the South Island of New Zealand, she was offered the opportunity to head to Milan for a one-month internship at Marni. It was her first time overseas and opened her eyes to what was possible.

“Growing up in New Zealand you felt like the real fashion world was quite far away,” she said. “I knew that New Zealand had a great fashion industry, and have always been really proud of New Zealand designers, but I did feel like that luxury catwalk thing was very far removed for us in New Zealand. I didn’t know anybody who had gone and worked internationally, and it wasn’t until I spent the time at Marni that I could see that it was definitely possible.”

After graduating she took herself off to Melbourne to start her career. But she couldn’t crack into the industry there, and after a year of working in cafes she decided to pack herself off to London. It was there she found her career - by challenging people’s perceptions and making herself indispensable.

“The people were quite dismissive about having a New Zealand qualification - there are two or three really big schools in London and it’s quite a small club, and unless you’ve come from one of those schools they’re really not interested in you. What does a New Zealander know about design? It was quite hard, and that’s kind of how I ended up becoming a pattern cutter.

“I got into some studios but only as a studio assistant. Nobody would let me do anything real - I was just kind of making tea, sweeping up, doing some cutting. I could see around me that they were really short of pattern cutters, and the quality was terrible. What I had picked up at design school was better than what a lot of the junior pattern cutters in London were doing.”

“The biggest surprise was, I thought it would be a year of sacrifice and longing, but in the end I actually gained more than I gave up. I reclaimed a lot of wasted time and I gained a huge amount of freedom. Freedom from thinking about what I wanted or needed or how I could make my life better by acquiring ‘things’. I actually feel liberated from the hamster wheel of consuming, and it’s a perspective that has transformed the way I will think about shopping forever.”

- Tara Viggo on the year she gave up clothes shopping

So she remade herself into a pattern cutter - a job, she admits, that few understand. “Nobody knows what I do. When I meet somebody in a bar and they ask, what do you do, and I tell them, they can’t even fathom it. I try to describe what I do, and they go oh, I didn’t know that was a job.” She pauses and chuckles. “Yeah, nobody does.”

In her both her day job and her new venture, Viggo’s calling on deep roots - both her mother and her grandmother were home sewers, and skilled enough to make their own wedding dresses.

But it took a while before she drew the connection between the work she’s doing now and the skills her mother and grandmother used over a lifetime. “I wanted to be into fashion. I thought what my mother was doing at home wasn’t real fashion.”

Fuelled by a love of punk rock and punk style, Viggo and her friends would rifle through recycled clothing bins and come out with clothes to take home and transform. She laughs at the memory: “We’d put my skinniest friend in through the slot in the clothing bin, and we’d pull out what we could find, and we’d chop it up and make outfits and stuff. We’d literally hold her feet and she would rummage through.” Out would come men’s corduroy trousers, shirts, anything that could be used to make up punk outfits.

“That’s how I got into it, and when I went to fashion school my sewing was terrible. The sewing teachers gave me a really hard time. I thought, it doesn’t matter, I’m going to be a designer. But as we progressed through the year I realised it didn’t matter how good my ideas were because I couldn’t express them. I would have to learn how to sew and I would have to learn how to pattern cut, so I took it quite seriously and I got sort of obsessive about learning the rules and the technical skills.” She’d learned one of the biggest lessons for almost any creative pursuit: “You can’t break the rules until you know them.”

Viggo found her way into pattern cutting through sheer persistence while working as a studio assistant. “They were looking for a pattern cutter but they refused to give it to me. I said to them, please let me have this job, I can do it. One of the designers took pity on me, and she said you can do some of the work in the evenings. I kept bringing it back, and everything I did was better than all the pattern cutters who were coming in and trying out for the job. Eventually they said, oh fine, have a job.”

“It was just being really persistent. Nobody’s looking to pay somebody who’s never done anything before: You have to have a bit of luck and a lot of persistence, I think.”

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LB pullovers in three versions.

Because Viggo was on a visa, she knew she had to make it work and that the clock was ticking. Her first job paid her less than minimum wage, so she worked in bars at night to cover the gap. Slowly she worked her way up to better and better fashion houses, and now divides her time between J.W. Anderson (challenging designs and a hectic environment) and Erdem (“everybody speaks in hushed voices”).

Listening to Viggo describe a typical day, you realise that she really does have a special skill - she’s able to give three-dimensional life to even the most abstract concepts in a designer’s head. She’ll get briefed by a designer, then return to her desk, some lengths of fabric and a mannequin, and get to work on the silhouette and the proportion. Then she’ll call the designer to have a look and they’ll talk through how things are going so far. “The designers are quite vague, and we sort of have to try and interpret each other. They’re very airy and I’m talking about millimetres.”

She realises that this skill of translation is crucial to her success. She can turn concepts into clothing just by listening, and by interpreting all sorts of clues. “It’s probably one of the biggest skills outside of the cutting that’s involved in my job,” she said. “As a freelancer I move around a lot, so I don’t know all of the designers. Sometimes they’ll give me a brief and I’ve only met them for literally three minutes. And I have to try to understand who they are, what they might want and what their taste is, having never met them, just from a drawing and just from a few words.

“It can be really tricky. I have to try and take from what they’re wearing, what they might feel about clothes. And from their body language, how they’re standing: do they like their clothes to be restrictive or loose? Once I get to know a designer, if I’ve worked with them for a few weeks, then it’s great and it’s really enjoyable.”

One designer, memorably, would bring in photos of ceramics, or waterfalls, and talk Viggo through the vibe of what she was after. Sounds impossible? It wasn’t - but it did take some time. “It was so difficult, but I worked with her for a long time and we managed to understand each other quite well, and some of the work i did with her has been my favourite. But it took a while to understand how to get, from a picture of a landscape, the mood she was trying to get across for the fit of the garment.”

There’s another big difference between Viggo’s fashion work and Paper Theory. When it comes to her own line, the designer has the average woman in mind.

“There’s not really much consideration for anyone who’s not a model size [in fashion],” Viggo said. “I’m using myself for Paper Theory. It’s been such a long time since I’d made clothes for myself that it was quite tough. I’m a 14 and I’ve been making stuff for size 6s. It has to feel nice. I imagine everything feels nice if you’re a size 6.”

She’s got two patterns on offer at the moment. She started with the Kabuki Tee*, a fascinating construction that results in a shirt that’s incredibly easy to wear, versatile and elegant. “I wear mine all the time - it’s such an easy piece.” You can make it using knits or woven fabric. “In linen it’s my favourite. I have a white linen one - I wear it as a T-shirt, and I can wear it to work, too.”

The LB pullover is her second offering, and whilst it’s not yet as popular as the Kabuki Tee, she believes it’s even more versatile - it could be a T-shirt, with short sleeves, long sleeves or no sleeves, or lengthened into a dress.

“The possibilities for that are quite enormous. I almost look at it as a block. I’m going on holiday soon and it would make a really easy shift dress. I could almost make an entire wardrobe of that.”

And that’s what Viggo would like to see: “I want people to have a shape that’s easy for them to make that they can use as building blocks for their own wardrobe.” To help people get the most from her patterns, she recently posted instructions on the Paper Theory website to step people through how to lengthen her shirt patterns into dresses. There's also a video tutorial illustrating exactly how to sew a right angle - a critical skill to execute the Kabuki tee.

Her other hope is that by sewing their clothes at home, people can get garments that really fit their own bodies, rather than being forced into the sizing grades offered up by fashion houses.

“That to me is the biggest plus for sewing,” Viggo said. “I’m really surprised that most sewers are not noticing that that’s the advantage that they have over the rest of the world. They can make something that looks so good on them - and they don’t take the time. A really small adjustment to a pair of trousers is the difference between looking like you’ve got a banging butt and great legs and looking like a frump. It can really make a huge difference.”

This is the value that Viggo’s disciplined, trained eyes can bring: “I scroll through Instagram and I think, 'Oh, if you’d just put an extra centimetre in that bust that top would look really great.' That’s the majority of my job, actually. I’ll make a style for the designer and then spend the rest of the week tweaking and changing. You learn a lot from that, so maybe that’s the knowledge I should share.”

• Update: In 2021 Tara renamed the Kabuki Tee, and it is now known as the Block Tee. She did this because she no longer felt it was right for the tee to bear the name of a garment so important to Japanese culture. As she wrote in an Instagram post announcing the change: “My understanding of cultural appropriation is much deeper now than it was four years ago and I no longer feel the name is appropriate - so I have decided to change it.” There’s more on the change on her blog.

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Helping teens learn fashion and design

For the last five years or so, Viggo has spent more than a few Saturdays giving back by teaching pattern cutting and sewing for a charitable organisation called F.A.D., which helps young people learn the ins and outs of all aspects of the fashion trade. She tells it this way:

“They are such a fantastic charity. They hold lots of workshops for young people. Every year they run a four-month programme which I volunteer at on Saturdays. The students design their own outfits and we help them pattern-cut and sew it from scratch. It helps them develop a portfolio for college, and they have a runway show at London Fashion Week to show their final designs.”

“It’s really the most incredible thing ever. Working with 16- to 18-year-olds is quite challenging, but I get so much back from the students. They have such fresh eyes and perspective - they challenge everything you say, EVERYTHING. It always makes me re-look at my perspective on fashion, my methods of construction and the way I do things, and keeps me creatively on my toes.”

All photos courtesy Tara Viggo

The Block Tee

@rosie_diycouture's Kabuki tee

The LB Pullover

@style_of_constructing's long-sleeve Block Tee

He bakes bread by the seashore

It’s no surprise that the Shelly Bay Baker is by the sea. Owner and sole baker Sam Forbes has an energy in the kitchen that is as relentless as the tide, and his enthusiasm for sourdough is as vast as the ocean itself.

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Sam Forbes. Shelly Bay Baker

We caught up with Sam recently to get the story behind his craft and to learn where his passion for sourdough comes from. 

He rewinds us 16 years to when he was 11 years old and already earning his stripes in a commercial kitchen. OK, so at this stage he’s peeling potatoes and doing the menial stuff in small-town west Wales. But he’s there in the kitchen, absorbing the tastes, the aromas, the tension, the bonhomie and the buzz of creation. And then there is the cash. Pocket money on steroids. When you have eight siblings financial independence has to be a good thing.

He kept going, building his repertoire with formal training and practical experience, and at 16 he was a full time chef. For someone who was never all that enamoured with school, this was a vocation that returned much… and opened the door on the unique party lifestyle that the hospitality industry is infamous for.

But this kid is diligent - he’s not one to faff about wasting time or energy. A bit of travel that takes in Australia, and a year in Queenstown, provided a buffer before he established himself in London and the rarefied air of fine dining.

London was also where he got another taste of Kiwi style, when he met and married his partner Bryony. When time was up on her OE it was an easy call for them to come back to New Zealand in 2013. For her, it was to study medical anthropology, now at master's stage; for him, it was to continue his kitchen odyssey. 

Sam landed in Wellington and in a larder stocked to the brim with encouragement and opportunity. It was Miramar’s The Larder restaurant, run by Jacob Brown and Sarah Bullock – masters of hospitality on both sides of the kitchen counter. It was here in 2016 that the epiphany occurred. Sam was at university studying geology, environmental science and biology - just to prove he could do it. Keeping his hand in at The Larder meant baking the bread in the morning before heading off to study. This presented Sam with a ‘THIS IS IT’ moment. This is the way he’s going to do his own thing. Bread. Satisfying, comforting, healthy, wholesome bread. Sourdough bread.

“What do I love about it? It’s about creating something. Those sacks of flour turn into loaves.

”It’s not so much about developing new recipes. It’s tinkering with the ones I have. They’re never the same really. It depends on the temperature of the day and humidity, you’re really dominated by the weather.”

— Sam Forbes

Jacob and Sarah not only let Sam go with good grace, they loaned him half the money he needed to get set up.  But first it was off to the San Francisco Baking Institute run by Frenchman Michel Suas. His business helps bakers around the world with hands-on, real-world experience that combines modern technology with traditional artisan techniques. You can see a connection here – Michel was baking at 14.

Sam amplified the three-week Institute course with bakery work on both coasts, including New York, Vermont, San Diego and back to the sourdough capital of San Francisco (a thing that started when the French bought their sourdough baking skills to the Californian gold rush in the mid-1800’s).

Sam liberated a little piece of history when he uplifted an American starter for the trip home. (A little science: sourdough starters are a simple fermented mixture of flour and water that contain a colony of microorganisms including wild yeast and lactobacilli. A starter is what makes sourdough the more easily digested magic that it is compared to breads made with yeast or baking soda.)

Once he got back home the dream took shape in 2017, when the Shelly Bay site unexpectedly popped up on Sharedspace. Americans Sharon Galeon and Midori Willoughby had started Wooden Spoon Boutique Freezery in 2011 and they had space to spare in the Bay. They thought a fellow artisan back from a visit to their homeland was the perfect culinary collaborator.

Making every dollar go as far as it could, Sam and Bryony mucked in to create the bakery in the Freezery building. Tracking down a series of leads was doubly rewarded when an ex-Pak 'n' Save oven was found for a good price and an industrial food mixer was thrown in for free. Bryony’s handyman family did the fitout, and the company logo was a family affair as well.

Then it was down to the business of baking. 

Sam is a machine in the kitchen. It’s just him. It’s his domain and he is the master. Looking like the lead in Jesus Christ Superstar he simply does not stop when we’re talking to him. Taking photographs is a dance class. His ‘work triangle’ is more like a hexagon and it’s well worn – bench for ingredients and tinkering with the recipe on the computer screen above, to the mixer to add flour, to the dough tubs that sit for 12-16 hours to lift and fold, to the whiteboard to record, to the bench, to the mixer to empty and clean, to the tubs to measure acidity. All the time scanning the thermometers for ambient temperature, because just one or two degrees either way will mean a change to production processes. Later it will be cranking up the oven – carefully so as to not blow out the three-phase power supply. Later still it will be milling grains and preparing ingredients for the next onslaught.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

That’s the way to churn through 750 kilograms of flour a week. That’s the way to bake a couple thousand loaves and bagels a week. And Sam reckons that’s the way to pay back your loans and be working for yourself and not The Man.

All it takes is working between 4am and 1pm for six days a week … and be at the market selling on the seventh. Thank goodness for Bryrony chipping in on market day too - especially training up other sellers so they can impart 'the knowledge'.

Originally there were no sales targets. Just bake. The plan was to supply the popular markets. Harbourside Market in town as well as Karori and Newtown in the suburbs supported the cause. But then demand for wholesale supply kicked in as well - to the likes of Peoples in Newtown, Havana Brothers, Maranui Cafe, Queen Sally’s Diamond Deli, Commonsense Organics, Milk Crate and others. It’s all proven Sam’s theory that there’s enough consumer demand for sourdough to support him and the others like Leeds Street, Baker Gramercy, Neville Chun and Catherine Adams, and that it's growing all the time.

Sam is also looking forward to his own version of the Shelly Bay development. He’s already pondering the possibility of a retail space on the site, as well as making the bakery even bigger and better.  He’s also recently had a fellow San Francisco Institute colleague with him helping to refine recipes and processes – including adopting the emerging modern bread philosophy of minimising handling. He’s already found ways to reduce production time and therefore make more bread in the same time. It sounds like he just grew another arm and leg.

But he’s also aware that small business is vulnerable. Anything can and does happen, as he was reminded on the eve of his short Christmas holiday. The last day’s baking was destroyed when the fridge malfunctioned. Sourdough that was being restrained at a cool 4 degrees was suddenly 20 degrees and busting out everywhere. Sam arrived at midnight to check and found the chaos. There was nothing to do but throw it all away. Eight rubbish bags of ruined dough is not something you put out for Santa.

Even then he was baking bread on the break, content to know it wasn’t going to be that flash when it’s coming out of holiday ovens and BBQ’s – but such is the joy of baking he’ll give it a go anyway. 

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So how does he cope with the relentless effort and heat of the kitchen?

A nightly swim in the bracing waters just metres from the bakery is the tonic. It’s another reward for working in Shelly Bay, a place that feels a million miles from the urban centre in plain sight just over the water.

You can’t help but think that’s the secret that whets his appetite for success. 

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You can find Sam and his bread at open-air markets and some food shops throughout Wellington. The best place to check for an up-to-date list is his website here.