The Holyhead Cowl

Now I've put my 3 cowls up for sale on my Etsy shop, I thought I'd do a series of 3 blog posts giving you a bit of insight into how they were made!

This cowl was inspired by Holyhead Mountain, and the combination of the gorse and heather against the rock.

After doing numerous drawings, paintings, colour studies etc from my photographs - I blew aspects of them up (see left) and used all my research to help me make knitting samples.

Here's a selection of them on Holyhead Mountain - my Mum and I took all the samples and photographed them in the landscape which they were inspired by. It was so strange going back because this was early spring, and all my photos were taken late summer - so the colours of the landscape were completely different. It was also quite amusing carrying a rucksack full of knitting around Anglesey :')

Some samples for the Holyhead Cowl were largely led by texture - such as this one, which was knitted with several strands of wool at once rather than using any specific colour work technique. Whichever colour came out more prominently was left entirely to luck, and the boucle wool I used really did make the sample feel like the hardy plants living on the mountain!

 The other sample I did was more geometric. I broke down and simplified my painting into a pattern that would work knitted in Fair isle. Fair isle knitting can only be worked with 2 colours per row, and so my brushstrokes became short stripes and large areas of colour became very uniform. I did really like this effect - all that needed altering was the colours, as at this point I was fishing colours out of a basket of scrap yarn that my mum gave to me!

My project eventually developed at looking at things in the round, and somehow I ended up looking at Buffs, specifically their packaging. I made my own "Buff packaging" out of iconic Anglesey objects - lighthouse, maps, birds - and voila! An idea was born.

I set about designing a knitting pattern, to be worn round the neck (like a buff, but more like a snuggly knitted cowl) and just did it! Knitted using fair isle in the round my first cowl to be finished was this one.

You can buy the knitting pattern to make your own, OR, if you don't want to knit your own, you can now buy the original from my Etsy shop - you decide!

 from Ravelry
Or go here to purchase from Etsy.

Painting

The majority of my research for any project is drawing and painting-based. My FMP was no exception, and I explored all ranges of media - stick and ink, watercolour, acrylic - before producing quite a few fully-realised paintings. The colours and shapes within these paintings then developed further into my digital prints, knitting patterns etc, so they really are the core of my project. Some, naturally, are more successful than others - and they vary from quite illustrative to bolder, almost simplified scenes. At all times I was thinking of the textures that expressive brushstrokes can create - something which I find more important than making it look photo-realistic, especially when working towards a textiles outcome. 

Cottage at South Stacks, Anglesey

Heather on Mynydd Twr/Holyhead Mountain

Cottage behind the rocks, South Stacks

View to Snowdonia from Beaumaris

Mynydd Twr/Holyhead Mountain

South Stacks Lighthouse

All these are now available to buy as a set of 6 cards, or if you REALLY like them - some are available to buy, smartly mounted and ready to stick into a frame! Check them out...