Last year was very intense and creative for me. It was the year of shawls, festivals, meeting fabulous knitters and making pretty things. It was also the year when I published probably my favorite collection Impulsive Knits.
Dieuwke and I met each other for the first time in Brighton at a festival. It clicked immediately and the idea of the collaboration came up pretty fast. A number of emails and Skype chats later we created a small collection of knitwear we'd love to find in our closet - from mittens, through hats and shawls to sweaters.
Impulsiveness can sometimes have negative connotations, but there’s a lot to be said for running with an idea and letting it take you to new and often unexpected places. And as there’s safety in numbers and two heads are better than one, embarking on a spontaneous adventure with a good friend provides a certain sense of security while increasing the creative possibilities.
“Impulsive Knits” was conceived when Justyna and Dieuwke met at Unwind Brighton, hit it off, and impulsively decided, “Hey, why not put together a collection?” Since then they’ve gotten together whenever possible, meeting up at several European yarn festivals and in Justyna’s hometown of Torun, Poland. Their time together has been gleefully spent planning, designing, chatting, laughing, eating, sightseeing, and of course knitting. (OK – there was a little bit of whining, but everybody knows that knitters don’t waste much time on that.)
The patterns in this collection were inspired individually, not based on a certain theme, but rather on each designer’s personality, aesthetics and yes, impulse, and enhanced by their new-found friendship and shared experiences.
And dessert….don’t forget dessert.
There are lots of design photos in the lookbook and the website, so I thought I'd show you some funny ones ;-) Or a peek behind the scene.
These two accompanied us in the photoshoot. Well, actually they fell in love with Dieuwke the moment they met her. I should have taken a photo when they climbed her with giggles (so far as I know it was with her content ;-)
It took us two days to take all the pics we needed. A huge amount of coffee and meringue kept us focused...
There was also a little bit of nervous sleeves finishing with hair drier blocking action afterwards ;-)
The whole time we worked on the collection was really nice and brought so much inspiration, laughter and positiveness. We published it during summer and are still very grateful to everyone who helped us, commented, shared and gave it some love.
Now I'm back to my needles with a new sweater and I'm thinking... maybe there should be a new collection this year too?