Modern British Knitting

Here's the outcome of my New Year's resolution - to start a blog. I'm passionate about knitting and supporting British yarn producers, designers and shops. I love challenging myself by learning new knitting techniques and skills, but there's also room in my project bag for basics that are easy to knit in front of the TV without having to keep looking at the pattern.

On this blog I aim to highlight the best of modern British knitting and champion all that's great about the knitting scene (although I have to admit that a good friend of my mine fell about laughing when I talked about the 'scene'). Here's hoping I'll discover lots of other like-minded people too.

To start off, I'll tell you a little about me. I was born with physical disability, OI, which led to me spending lots of time in bed with fractures. I learnt crafts as a child to keep me occupied, but can't remember whether it was school, my mum or one of my grandmothers who first encouraged me to pick up a pair of needles. The highlight of my junior knitting experimentation was a lemon zipped cardigan (alas long gone to a charity shop) knitted in chunky wool as featured in my then must-have mag - Just Seventeen. I know I still have that pattern somewhere and will publish a photo when I can find it.

All went quiet on the knitting front until I was in my late twenties and living in London working in TV, then website editing and production. A friend had re-taken up knitting and invited me along to a knitting event at the V&A museum, one which signalled that knitting was once again back in vogue. I picked up a pair of needles, tried to remember how it was done, and after a couple of disasters including a jumper for my baby nephew that had to go on a teddy because the neck hole was too small ('do you really have to buy the size needles that the pattern says?' I naively thought) I was back on the knitting wagon.

Nowadays, due to chronic pain from OI, I work from home as a freelance journalist. I've ambitions to be an amateur knitting designer and was one of the winners in Toft Alpaca's 2013 design competition. As well as writing travel features and book reviews I've had knitting and craft articles published in Mollie Makes and The Knitter magazines. Welcome to my blog.