Pastel Passion

I love a good pastel colour palette and thanks to Barry M's amazing range of pastel shades I have been rocking pastel nails for the past few weeks,

These aren't my nails, I'm not that neat! Pastels are often reffered to as 'ice cream colours' but here it's the cones that are amazing colours rather than the ice cream itself, shame they don't sell them in my local shop...

And of course, I can't write a blog about pastels without mentioning the most visually appealing french treat, the macaron!
Last but not least in the edible pastels department,I've been eating these, with it being Easter weekend'n'all, it would be rude not to, right?!

The thing that actually sparked my writing of this blog is the below image. I discovered these beautiful pastel scenes in the clips of the 'hand coloured' film ' A trip to the Moon' (Le voyage dans la lune) in the film Hugo which I can highly reccommend!

I am completely taken by these film clips and will definitly hunting down more films by Georges Melies and hand tinted film in general. I love the imagination in the story and how everything was real sets and people in costume. If you like what you see you might also like to watch this clip....

Yayoi Kusama - getting excited

Right now I'm at home, on the verge of delving into a good few hours of work that involves reading a book with NO pictures in it....I know, perish the thought. But, this isn't about doing the boring work, this is about what I'm looking forward to and getting excited about that gets me throught the boring work!

This is about Yayoi Kusama and how I'm ridiculously excited about the possibility of seeing her work in real life at the end of this month! I don't know much about her, and I'm not going to pretend I do, what I do know is this - she's Japanese, she's been making art that very much pleases my eyes since the 60s,

She is now in her 80s and is still an active artist. I have looked at pictures of her work a lot but never thought there would be an opportinity to see it in real life!

Yayoi's work is on exhibit at the Tate until June, I am going at the end of the month and will do a proper blog about this awesome lady when I've been to the exhibition.

Getting organiz-ized...

Making the most of working from home by getting my spaces in order....

Firstly the closet, I am LUCKY to have a teeny room to call my closet, now all neat and tidy...

And in the studio, the good news is the floor is now visible and I'm feeling inspired! I gave the pin-board a spring clean unearthing some of my favourite pictures and adding some new ones.

Also, I re-homed these blue animal paintings from a local charity shop....

They have been inspiring me as has the work of Mark Ryden, these will remain as sketches/ideas in my head until I get back to creating in the Summer when I go back part-time!

This was 2011...

Happy New Year!!!

But let's not rush into the new year wothout thinking about all the awesome things that happened in 2011. There were ups and downs but I'm all about the positives! So here are my 2011 highlights!

YSP trips
Trip to Roller Derby tournament where I fell in love with New Skids on the block
Met and got tattooed by the lovely and awesomely talented Sunny Buick
Visited portmeirion and had an all round awesome adventure in Wales
Public Roller Derby debut
Harry Potter premiere with Holly Horcrux
Knitted Nancies
Wrote a knitting pattern for a book
Roller Skated a Marathon
Sugar papers 7 & 8
Filey seaside and rock factory trip
Belgium - waffles, chocolate and my first festival experience

I'm sure there are lots of things I'm missing off, but looking back at this, there were some pretty good parts to 2011, bring on 2012!!!

Work, Wheels and Wool!

Hello there, what was that? Where have I been hiding all these months?!

Well, there has been work which has been greedily taking up my monday-friday,

One wall of my office there, with some ace 70s knitted fabrics we found when clearing out in the Summer, that place is full of old treasures!!!

Then roller derby, that's the wheels which I just can't get enough of....this is me jamming at the Sheffield Steel Rollergirls' Crucibelles bout against Rainy City's B team, tough but FUN!!!

....and of course in amongst that, whenever I get a chance, there is Knit and Destroy, which of course is the wool!!! On this front I have mostly been fulfilling customer orders, and this fella is always popular in the winter months...
That was possibly the briefest round up of 3 months in the history of ever!!! And that's all from me for now,

See you next year! KD x x x

French knitters...

I like france and knitting, and you know what I really like...French knitters!!! Also known as knitting nancies, spool knitters, tricotins and many more names worldwide. These simple wooden dolls that allow you to knit a continuous tube strike a chord in many people's childhood memories. I really like them and when an exhibition opportunity came up with the brief of 'tradition and technology' I knew I wanted to do something with these knitting nancies.


Armed with lots of images of various knitting nancies, a knitting machine, some wool and some (techno) thermoform yarn I began on my 'knitted nancies', there was a lot of trial and error but I finally got the art of machine knitting with wool along with and very springy plasticy yarn down to a T. Heat setting the yarns around objects to give them the shape you see below was also a challenge, and I am happy with the end result!


Another knitting nancy related project that I am super-happy with is the tattoo I got from the lovely Sunny Buick. Here I am post tattoo in Sunny's studio in Paris!

This is my only knitting related tattoo (so far, he hee) and I am really happy with it. The word underneath is 'tricote' french for knit.

If you like knitting nancies and could look at pictures of them all day, check out this blog, dedicated too spool knitting, it's great!

State of Craft

Hello there,

It has been a while, but I have some exciting news...Knit and Destroy is going to be featured in an awesome new craft book! At the beginning of the year, the lovely Victoria Woodcock (the lady behind Making Stuff and the UK BUST craftaculars) contacted me about contributing to a new craft book her and her friend Ziggy were putting together. This would involve me creating a hand-knit pattern for them..only the exact thing that I had at the top of my to-do list this year, and this gave me the kick up the bum I needed to do it. Lots of maths, lots of knitting and a bit of writing later I had the pattern finished! You can see the paintbrush scarf on the front of the book here...

This book is full of lots of great projects from today's hottest crafters, not least Seleena Laverne Daye, artist and co-writer of Sugar Paper Zine, this lady can do some amazing things with felt...watch this space!!!

The book is out in October, you can pre-order it here. The perfect christmas gift for any crafter!