• Studio Views in Spain

• Aurèlia Muñoz at the Reina Sophia

• Look & Listen

Studio Views in Spain

In May I had the privilege of a vacation to Spain (I went somewhere and it wasn’t for work!). I still managed to make it somewhat about work because we met some interesting craftspeople and lucked out with several excellent exhibitions along our route. Since the studio work I’m doing right now is very much in-progress, and I am in need of a creative rest/reset, I’m going to share some of these new connections instead — plus a few other interesting textile things I’ve come across in Look & Listen.

Aurèlia Muñoz at the Reina Sophia

I normally think I’m a fairly organized person but something about this winter had me working at the last minute for every single thing, so we left for Spain without much of a plan.

A week before we arrived in Madrid, I decided that maybe yes, perhaps we should go to at least one museum, and this is when I learned about Aurèlia Muñoz’s exhibition, Beings, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sophia.

Muñoz was a Spanish textile artist who made the decision to devote herself to art in the 1950s when she was already in her 30s. Beings charts her work through the next 50 years of her practice, introducing the viewer to sculptures made from thread and paper, embroidered tapestries, macrame, preparatory drawings and maquettes; many of these pieces have never been exhibited before and much comes from her archives. This year marks a centenary since her birth, and Beings is one of many events celebrating her life and work.

I didn’t really know much about her her, perhaps only that she made large macrame sculptures in a similar vein to Magdalena Abakanowicz. I appreciate this style of work but it’s not really my favourite, so it was a delight to wander through the rooms and experience more than just the titular Beings; Muñoz’s considered and deeply creative practice felt so clear and personal, embodied across techniques and materials with a refreshing authenticity.

In the first gallery you encounter embroidered tapestries. Stitched onto hessian sacks, these densely worked surfaces are not woven, but appear as though they could be — and indeed, in 1965, they were the first time embroidery was selected for the Lausanne International Tapestry Biennial. In creating these works, Muñoz was responding to a long tradition of Spanish needlework and Catalan “needle painting,” “acu pictae”, that can be found in works such as the Tapestry of Creation in the Girona Cathedral.

These large textile works were sometimes created in several pieces — for example, Homage to Jerónimo Bosco (Homage to Hieronymus Bosch), 1971, was constructed in pieces with the help of a team and stitched together before being delivered to the client. This is the first time it’s been on display to the public.

I am deeply fascinated by artistic process, so it was the drawings, maquettes and other preparatory work that really brought this exhibition together for me. Muñoz was deeply inspired by Surrealism, Modernisme and other Avante-Garde movements and artists like Antoni Gaudí, Paul Klee, and Joan Miró, and I felt this was evident in her pen, ink, watercolour, and gouache drawings, which featured abstract shapes, animals, birds, and other assembled figures.

Several groups of drawings were displayed in the second gallery with the wonderful airborne Aerostat, or bird-kite, sculptures floating above. These works began in the late 1970s, inspired by early airplanes and paragliding equipment. As the title of the exhibition suggests, the Aerostats are much more than the sum of their canvas-and-rod materials; there was an aliveness and child-like personality to the pieces, like a paper airplane or origami bird come to life. They were all the richer for the maquettes (studio models) and 2d sketches presented alongside.

At this point I was already thrilled by what I was seeing and that was only two rooms! There were still four more to go! Muñoz had a very wide-ranging practice and in a retrospective like this it was very pleasing to travel from embroidered tapestry to Aerostat to drawing to macrame sculpture and see the through-line of ideas, interests, and themes. The third room featured pieces from her Aerial Books series, bringing together reading and flight, two of Muñoz’s lifelong creative interests. For her, the book wasn’t just something that held information, but an object, or perhaps being, with a materiality of its own. Looking around, you can see the echos of this conceptual and physical exploration of books and reading scattered throughout her work.

Progressing, there was a gallery full of handmade paper sculptures and another with preparatory work from her archive. In the last space were Muñoz’s Beings, large hanging macrame sculptures that she began working on in 1967 after breaking her leg; macrame knots are something she could do while remaining immobile during recovery, and these massive works mark the shift from her earlier flat stitched wallworks. These pieces are what brought her international recognition, and, as I mentioned earlier, recall other contemporary women artists of her time, like Magdalena Abakanowicz, Olga de Amaral, and Lenore Tawney.

The exhibition text presents the role of the knot in Muñoz’s practice as “as an essential gesture, underlying all the artistic languages she had explored up to then,” and positions them as “simultaneously surface and volume, body and garment.” Again, like in other pieces, figures with a curious intelligence take shape as you walk around many of the works, characters arrested in the middle of movement.

You can tell when an artwork feels “dead,” a flat thing on the wall that may have beauty or interesting elements, but lacks an ineffable vitality (and I saw an exhibition like this later on — I’ll share it next month). Muñoz’s works couldn’t be further from this; even in the white cube of a huge gallery, they were alive, animated - beings - the artist’s presence and hand looking forward from the past.

Beings is on display at the Reina Sophia (which offers free admission in the evenings) until September 7, 2026, after which it travels to MACBA in Barcelona from November 5, 2026 - March 29, 2027. A full list of centenary exhibitions and events can be viewed on the MACBA website here. There is a catalogue produced about this exhibition as well; it’s a good thing the gift shop was closed, I have a bad habit of collecting heavy books while travelling…

The wall texts in the exhibition were a great help in gathering my thoughts for this newsletter, as well the information and Press Kit produced by the Reina Sophia.

Look & Listen

• Ten years after the last edition, the Flax and Linen Symposium returns this summer. Held in Bedford, PA, (USA) from August 21-23, 2026, this event is both a learning and gathering opportunity for people interested in flax and linen, as well as a fundraiser for the National Museum of the American Coverlet. There are very interesting sounding presentation on topics like flax growing and processing, making flax tools, and weaving on warp-weighted looms, as well as workshops and a marketplace.

• Flax is having a moment! Related to the above, this article in the Guardian from a few months ago: ‘Linen is meaningful in Belfast’: how an old industry is weaving the city a new identity.

• Coming up at the end of June is the WARP (Weave a Real Peace) Annual Gathering, which is being held in Guelph, Ontario, from June 24-28, 2026. WARP is a non-profit organization with members located world-wide, and this year’s gathering brings together “Indigenous artists, regenerative fiber farmers, sustainability innovators, historians, fashion disruptors, scholars, and makers,” with programming such as a keynote address by Naomi Smith, an artist from the Chippewas of Nawash Nation in Neyaashiinimiing, a talk by Toronto-based weaver Deborah Livingston-Lowe and Wave Weir about local fashion and textiles, as well as a marketplace. Information about this conference can be found on their website here.

• Bower is a free online drafting program for weavers that runs through your browser. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks promising! There is no downloading required, no subscription, and it works on all platforms, even your phone. An advanced version is available for a small licensing fee, with additional features like block substitution, direct editing, yarn simulation, advanced rendering, and offline use. But creating, saving, and printing drafts from the free version are all free, making it a great option for students and new weavers.

• Another fun online weaving tool is Block Drafter, by Allison Connell. I also haven’t tried this one yet, but it’s a tool for aiding in the development of double weave projects.

• I found this article by Mairin Wilson, Buy Wool Now, on her substack The Mindful Designer’s Almanac, interesting.

Thank you for reading! See you next month.

Amanda

• Studio Views

• Spain!

• Look & Listen

• Your work

Studio Views

Not much to see in the studio this past month. I was struck down by a very nasty flu and am only now catching up on half-finished projects and it looks as though the studio has exploded — there is a couch in here somewhere...

I’m sorry if you came by Knit City to say hello — I was in bed!

Any creative practice, therefore, has been at low ebb between illness, the crush of the end of term, and a few other surprises. I didn’t even take any pictures at Landmade last month, nor have I done any drawing or sampling, though I do have a project for Gist Yarn on the loom for release later this year.

What I can share are some images of the finished collaboration with Roncy Packs! They debuted at the OOAK Show in Toronto and I was very humbled to hear people were hustling to get there to buy one. Post-show, there are three of twelve packs remaining — they will go on sale through the Roncy Packs website on Sunday, April 19th.

Le Ching gave me a ticket to visit the show and we got to meet for the first time, which was so nice after so many messages back and forth. I had such a wonderful time working with them again and we’ve already talked about another collaboration in the future…

It’s also the end of term, which means student fashion shows and exhibitions. I was thrilled to offer two past students, Emma Piercy and Kate Fitzpatrick, some technical advice on including hand weaving into their graduating projects. Emma created a beautiful exhibition titled In Her Nature, exploring the intersection of humanity and nature through rooted, growing garments that incorporated natural dyes and handwoven lace. Emma had explored hand manipulated lace weaving in my class, and for her capstone collection I advised her on loom controlled lace weaves, which you can see integrated in the garment below.

Kate’s runway collection is called For Fluidity and is a “fall/winter gender-fluid collection that reimagines androgyny through avant-garde silhouettes and handcrafted textiles.” Kate’s experimental process explored hand spinning samoyed dog fur (!), hand woven trims, and an open, very loosely woven fabric, much of it inspired by work she did while on exchange in the UK last year.

Her final collection featured several of these elements, including a hooded top made with hand woven yardage (seen above). Making yardage is a huge undertaking and it was a thrill to watch her looks go down the runway. You can see her collection in the broadcast of the show below (it’s cued to begin with her collection).

Thank you Emma and Kate for letting me feature your capstone projects in my newsletter!

Spain

I will be in the Asturias next month. Do you have any recommendations or favourite things to do in Madrid or near Oviedo? As always, I’d love to connect with weavers and I’m particularly interested in local textiles and wool!

Look & Listen

• In February, Gather Textiles launched a wonderful series of short videos on the weavers of Edmonton, Canada, called Weaving Stories. I love personal, local projects like this; I often find myself stuck feeling like the most interesting things are happening elsewhere, and this is a great reminder that there are amazing people and fascinating stories everywhere.
  
  This series of video interviews brings to light some of the individuals and groups that make up the weaving community in Alberta. I enjoyed learning about the dancing costumes, Métis sashes, and the connections to history, self, and heritage that weaving has brought into people’s lives. Craft and small-scale making adds so much to the fabric (pun intended) of our communities, and it is wonderful to see it foregrounded and supported so sensitively.
  
  The Weaving Stories project is free to watch on YouTube and can be found on the Gather Textiles website here.
  

• I had a chance to pop into Craft Ontario to see Akash Inbakumar’s exhibition When I Ebb and Wax. Bringing together costume, textiles, and performance, this exhibition was a delight; rippling indigo textiles draped from the ceiling, and playful, costumed figures of wood and rope created a feeling of narrative and implied movement. The costumes were indeed meant to move; you could watch a video performance or attend a live, in-person performance where performers brought them to life. When I Ebb and Wax is only on for a few more days, until April 18, 2026, and the exhibition page can be viewed here .

  

• My friend Ikumi Otaki has recently been added to the Homo Faber Guide, an online platform dedicated to raising the profile of craft artists around the world. Ikumi trained as an artist and weaver in Japan and Sweden, and lives and works in Yamagata, Japan. Her woven work is very beautiful (she has a lovely sense of colour and pattern!) and I think very fondly of our time together in Japan visiting silkworms, rummaging at the ReBuilding Center, and delicious meals with her and her family. Her Homo Faber profile can be viewed here.
  

• Two current Danish textile exhibitions were recently profiled on the HANDVÆRK website. Gobelins – The Frederiksborg Tapestries is a newly opened exhibition celebrating the tapestries that ring the Great Hall of Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerød. From about 1900-1928, a group of women weavers lead by Kristiane Konstantin-Hansen planned and organized the reweaving of tapestries depicting historic narratives. A close up of dandelions and clovers on the Frederiksborg website shows the care and complexity of the work, and I’m sure the exhibition’s accompanying publication, Strands of Time, expands on the process, work, and stories included in the tapestries.

  
  The article on HANDVÆRK also mentions another exhibition titled NATURE TO NATURE at Munkeruphus in Dronningmølle.
  
  “NATURE TO NATURE is a large thematic exhibition exploring what happens when art and design rediscover the richness and narratives embedded in our Nordic material heritage.
  
  The exhibition is rooted in the fact that the Nordic landscape possesses remarkable biodiversity, once clearly reflected in art, design and craft. In the past, we made things from a wide range of local natural materials, drawing on a wealth of skills, disciplines, traditions, rituals and ingenuity. We made them waterproof, tanned them, dyed them, glued them and processed them – all without the synthetic, often plastic-based materials we widely accept today.
  
  This exhibition invites us into a world where a connection has been re-established between what we create and the nature that surrounds us, and where every artwork can once again be returned to nature producing the finest soil.”
  
  This group exhibition features several contemporary makers, but I am particularly intrigued in the kombu seaweed sculptures of Julia Lohmann, the bark and mud sculptures of Jette Mellgren, and work by Claudy Jongstra (you may like to listen to a Material Matters interview with Jongstra that I’ve mentioned before).
  
  A free article (in English and Danish) is available to read on the HANDVÆRK website with images and impressions of both exhibitions.
  

• The artist Nakahira Misako is one of this year’s finalists for the Loewe Craft Prize. She’s posted a short video to her Instagram about her work and process that you can watch below:

  The Loewe Craft Prize is an annual competition that celebrates outstanding skill in contemporary craft from artists around the world. There are thirty finalists in the ninth edition of the prize; the exhibition of their work is being held at the National Gallery Singapore from May 13 - June 14, 2026, and features Nakahiro Misako as well as artists like Adelene Koh (bookbinder), Fadekemi Ogunsanya (textile artist, see below!), and Jongjin Park (ceramics). In 2019 I was in Tokyo at the same time as that year’s prize and I still think about it — it was one of the most incredible exhibitions I’ve ever seen (not least because it was presented in Isamu Noguchi’s piece Stone Heaven, which you can see here).

• Another far-off exhibition I’d love to visit is Thread at Sarah Myerscough Gallery in London, England. Running from March 28 - May 16, 2026, Thread “explores the notion that weaving is both a thought or idea, as well as a process of making that speaks to the fundamental interconnectedness of human experience.” This group exhibition surveys contemporary woven work by global artists like Patrick Bongoy (who explores environmental pollution), Wanbing Huang’s ramie and xiabu (Chinese grass cloth) sculptures, and Kate McGuire’s uncanny, feathered pieces. This exhibition is not to be missed if you are able to go! I should have decided to fly to Spain through London…
  

• Textiles, Politics and Creative Resistance is an online book club happening on April 23, 2026, to celebrate the publication of a new book from Common Threads Press titled We Will Find Them: Arpilleras and the Political Art of Chile Under Pinochet. This book explores and celebrates the work of the arpilleristas, groups of working-class women who created resistance textiles during Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship in Chile (you can read more about the textiles and see images here.)
  
  I’ve had the pleasure of seeing these colourful, pointed, and beautifully stitched narrative works, and I imagine author Jess White and artist Francisca Aninat’s conversation will offer many interesting insights into textiles-as-resistance and Latin American textiles. Tickets for this meeting are free for Crafts Council members and £8 for non-members. See more on their Instagram page here or on the Crafts Council website.

Your Work

Lastly, I really love when people send me images of projects they’ve woven from my weaving patterns, and I periodically like to share them here in my newsletter. I think of writing patterns much like I do recipes: I provide the ingredients and you choose what to substitute, which is where the fun happens!

Thanks to Jeannette and Veronica for kindly letting me share these interpretations of their Rosa Wash Cloths and Seed Pod Towels projects.

Thank you, as always, for reading this newsletter. I’m looking forward to finishing school and having a bit of rest — and then a summer of fun in the studio!

Amanda

• Knit City Toronto

• Roncy Packs Collaboration

• Interwoven: Art and Ecology of the Island

Knit City Toronto

On March 27-29, 2026, the knitting festival Knit City is returning to Toronto. I’ll be at the Irene Textiles booth on Saturday March 28th with Yde and her beautiful weaving yarns, looms, and textile supplies. Please come by and say hello if you are attending and stock up on weaving materials from Gist Yarn (like Beam and Sero), Fonty Merlin linen yarn, or this intriguing Mondofil Japanese paper yarn — I’m not sure what Yde is actually bringing, so if there’s anything you’d like, please email them in advance so they can pack accordingly or bring your order along.

My friends from Black Sheep Farm will also be there with beautiful Ontario wool for knitting and weaving. Brenda gave me some of the intriguing new yarn she’s just had spun from the Navajo Churro members of her flock. This unique 3-ply was made especially for rugs at Wave Fibre Mill, and comes in generous ~530g/1400yd cones! I’ve enjoyed having a little side-quest in the last week trying out this yarn; Brenda will have the samples I’ve made at her booth for you to feel starting Saturday, but cones can also be purchased online here.

For those who want to know the details or plan a project: I sampled this yarn as a rug weft (6 EPI using a doubled 2/12 linen warp), in plain weave (6 EPI) and in twill (8 EPI). I’m not sure which structure I liked best (rug weaving does not come naturally to me), but the yarn has a beautiful hand for something that looks so rustic.

The complete vendor list for Knit City can be found here; it’s being held at the Enercare Centre, an easy five minute walk from Exhibition Station. Please come and say hello!

Roncy Packs Collaboration

While the regular parts of my newsletter have taken a rest for the past few months, there have been several small (and a few large) projects going on behind the scenes.

The one coming up the soonest is my next collaboration with Roncy Packs, a family-owned company in Toronto that makes cross-body bags and other accessories. A few years ago Le Ching, Lyli, and their mom turned the off-cuts and leftover fabric from Generation’s upholstery process in packs. The limited collection of twelve packs sold out in 24 hours (!!), a very exciting and humbling experience.

This spring, we’re making another set of packs from a new batch of hand woven fabric I’ve made especially for this collaboration. Like our previous collection, the packs will have my custom fabric on the face, with a recycled fabric lining and recycled leather back and sides.

Roncy Packs is still the same inspiring mother and daughter team that I worked with in 2023. They continue to make amazing bags and packs entirely out of recycled textiles that come to them as scraps and deadstock from local businesses and recycling partners or via clients who want to upcycle an old coat or bag. This month, they won a small business prize from Moneris; in this short video, Le Ching gives a great overview about how the company started and how they plan to continue.

The plan (I think!) is to debut these new packs at the spring One of a Kind Show, April 9-12, 2026, in Toronto. I’ll share more when I know, but just in case this newsletter doesn’t come out before the show, I recommend you follow Roncy Packs on Instagram if you’d like a pack.

Interwoven

In February I had the pleasure of being a visitor at an artist residency called Interwoven: Art and Ecology of the Island. Having so recently thought a great deal about my own experience at a residency, it was a huge treat to be a guest at another for a brief, but extraordinarily rich, day and a half.

Interwoven happened at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts on the Toronto Islands, a unique chain of fifteen interconnected islands that sits a short ferry ride from downtown Toronto. What I’ve always liked about the island is the contrast between its proximity to the hustle and bustle of a major city and the peace and disconnection you feel when there — the ferry ride takes less than ten minutes, but it feels much, much farther away. The islands were originally known by their Indigenous name of Menecing/Mnisiing1, or “On the Island,” and are part of the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Wendat peoples.

I grew up in Toronto, and while I’ve visited the Island many times before, I’d never actually visited Gibraltar Point — which now seems like a real oversight! It’s a rambling old school building that has felt the hands of many artists since it was saved from demolition 25 years ago and turned into a dedicated arts centre by residents of the Toronto Islands.2

Interwoven was a thematic residency that brought together sixteen artists interested in exploring where place, ecology, and creative practice intersect. Guided by “principles of slowness, reciprocity, and attentiveness,”3 it was hosted by Deborah Dewbury and Sammy Tangir, and participating artists worked in many mediums: basketry, broom-making, crochet, cyanotypes, drawing, sewing and stitching, knotting, natural dyeing, paint-making and painting, spoon carving, and more.

The seeds of Interwoven were planted a few years ago when Deborah attended a residency lead by Métis artist Gordon Brochu-Ingram, who was looking for willow and dogwood weavers to gather and create a land-based installation at Gibraltar Point. In Deborah’s words, “Gordon spoke of the vital role red osier dogwood plays in the fragile ecosystem of Toronto Island — its roots securing the shoreline from erosion, forming what he described as an interwoven raft beneath the surface, holding the island together. A living basket. A woven foundation.”4

One mild Sunday, I got on the ferry and travelled across the bay among ice sheets and arctic ducks for the residency’s open house. In the warmth (both literal and figurative) of the event, I visited artists studios and explored the results of the group’s week together. And there was so much!

I am lucky enough to be a friend of the host, so I got to spend the night and really get a feel for how their week ebbed and flowed. There was a sunset beach walk (the rounded ice balls rolling in the waves were especially beautiful), went on a trip to the “store” (where the wild dogwood grows), chatted about natural dyes, and admired paints, brooms, birds, and wind socks.

I attended their closing circle and was touched by the outpouring of gratitude from the artists, who clearly connected very deeply during their week creating together. That’s not always a given at residencies; sometimes you’re alone, other times you luck the hell out like I did, but there’s always a risk in a large group that something won’t click. But the atmosphere at Interwoven was obviously very special, tangible even to a guest like myself, and I was grateful to get to experience it.

If art and ecology interest you, the hope is that there will be another iteration of Interwoven in late 2026 or beyond; please follow their Instagram account to see more from the participants and be alerted for future calls.

Upcoming on my calendar in April is Mass Exodus, TMU’s graduating exhibition. After three years teaching in the Fashion program I finally get to watch students I know and have taught walk their final collections down the runway or present their graduating projects in an exhibition I’ve been consulting with two past students on hand woven elements for their final collections and I am SO excited to see what they’ve made and sharing their work here.

See you in April,

Amanda

There’s a Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 about Denmark that you may like to catch up with first. This newsletter may be clipped in your inbox — I encourage you to click on the title (February 2026) to visit this post in your browser so you don’t miss anything. Thanks!

Studio News

Thank you to everyone who came out and visited Soft Curve, Hard Line at the DesignTO Festival. Toronto was walloped with a huge snow storm and bitter temperatures (-22℃!) during the festival that made standing on a sidewalk to look in a shop window heroic.

This is the…. ?th time I’ve collaborated with Helen (4th? 5th? enough times that I can’t keep track), and I always find our material dialogue nourishing and resetting. Other than my proposal (which was along the lines of: “we both like checks, let’s make something with checks!”), we didn’t really talk in depth about what we would make, trusting our senses and each other to make sympathetic work. I was so pleased with the final installation, which looked even better than what was in my mind’s eye. What a treat to participate in DesignTo together.

Thank you very much to the Ontario Arts Council and Government of Ontario for their exhibition assistance support.

Coming up in a few short weeks is Landmade 2026!! Landmade began in 2017 with the idea that there needed to be a market for and by local fibre farmers to sell wool, fleece, and other products from their farms and to connect with the makers — a farm-to-table event for knitters, crocheters, weavers, and other curious folks.

In 2024, Landmade began collaborating with Toronto Metropolitan University to create a 2-day event that expands on the original market format to include talks, workshops, and exhibitions. I’m so pleased to say that Fashion x Landmade is BACK for year two at The Creative School, TMU, and will be taking place on Friday March 6 and Saturday March 7, 2026.

Landmade is free and open to anyone who wishes to attend. Each day will feature a marketplace with different farmers and producers, but Friday has a speakers series, and Saturday will host Skills Building Workshops — and I’m teaching one!

Amend/A Mend is an intro to knitwear mending and will be happening from 1:45-3:00pm on Saturday March 7, 2026. It costs $35 to participate and limited to 8 people. During the workshop I’ll introduce you to a basic repair method, which you’ll practice using swatches knit made from Ontario wool and alpaca yarn from Lickety Spit Fibre Farm. You don’t need any knitting or making experience to join us, and all materials will be provided. You’ll also get a little zine I made in 2015 to help remind you of what you’ve learned.

If you would like to sign up, registration is open now. Please visit this link to purchase your ticket, and I’m looking forward to seeing you at Landmade!

Full program details and information about other participants can be found at www.landmadefibre.ca.

Curve/Kurv: A Delightful Symmetry

This is the last planned instalment about my trip to Denmark in July 2025. I’ve gotten so many nice messages and comments; thank you! There may be more I’ll write in the future, but for now I’ll do my best to wrap things up.

In this last essay, I will tell you more about what I made and learned while working at Det Vilde Spinderi (DVS) (it wasn’t ALL gallivanting all around Denmark and Sweden…).

The kernel of my application to attend DVS began in the autumn of 2024 when I bought a knitting machine at a thrift store auction. I’ve never been terribly interested in knitting machines; I like the tactile and hands-on process of hand knitting, but recurring tendinitis in my right arm does limit the time (and to be honest, desire — pain is no fun) to knit. I had two knitting machines in my classroom, too, and I felt like since I teach hand knitting, I ought to be able to tell students what the next steps could look like.

Domestic knitting machines are long, thin, metal and plastic rectangles; they look much like a keyboard, but instead of keys, there is a row of latch hooks. These hooks act like individual knitting needles that create, support and work each stitch. When you are actively knitting, you use your hands to move a carriage along the needle bed. The carriage places your working yarn into a stitch and knits it by moving the needle forwards and back as it passes across the bed.

Like any tool, using the knitting machine has benefits and drawbacks. For starters, yes, it’s much faster to knit on machine than it is by hand. However, any shaping or effects like increases or decreases are still hand-manipulated, so it still feels very hands-on — there’s no pressing a button (at least, not on my machine!) and having it whizz away and make something for you.

Unless you’re using other tools, like punchcards, the machine only knits stockinette fabric, and, unlike hand knitting where you look at the front of your fabric as you knit, the back of the knitting faces you while you’re working on the machine, which I sometimes find a bit disorienting. Machines also come in one gauge, so you need an entirely different machine to knit a thick yarn than you do to knit a thin one.

Being naturally curious and already having good technical and problem-solving skills from weaving, learning to use the knitting machine has been fairly straightforward, though there’s plenty more to learn, and I’ve mainly made flat things and one sweater (and two un-successful ones too).

Knitting offers a different visual language than weaving. Where weaving is flat, non-stretchy, and pattern is controlled and, in some senses, limited by how you program the loom, knitting is the opposite. It has stretch, it can be circular, textured, and you can completely change your pattern and material, down to a single stitch, at any time.

I applied to go to DVS to focus on gaining competency with the knitting machine with the idea that it might benefit my practice as an artist as well as an educator. I knew that just staying home to do this on my own machine was possible, but the value in doing an artist residency is that you get to live outside of the routine and distractions of everyday life — as well as the pleasures of encountering new cultures, people, and ways of working. And my loom is a huge distraction! There is always the small voice in my head encouraging me to work on a pattern idea or get ahead on the next project or, alas, the most annoying voice that is distracted by whatever passing thought or “what if…” crosses my mind. Sometimes you have to clear space and the residency experience is a nice way to leave all of that behind.

DVS is equipped with two knitting machines, and I used both to experiment with gauge and colour. I practiced in advance with my own machine so I had basic skills when arrived and could focus on a question I had set out for myself — how could I knit a curve?

Shaping is an essential part of making knitted things that are not just rectangles, and is especially essential for garments, which have heels and arm holes and areas that expand (such as around your bicep) or contract (around the wrist), so curves felt like a good method for moving away from the rectangle.

In the months before visiting DVS, the ocean was never far from my mind, as was the German word for beach, strand. Down the Øresund and across the Baltic is the seaside town where my grandparents grew up, and I found myself often thinking of them, not only because of the geographic closeness to where my family is from, but also because the last time I was in Denmark was with them.

In English, strand means “a thin thread of something, often one of a few, twisted around each other to make a string or rope”— the obvious textile reference — but it is also defined as “a part that combines with other parts to form a whole story, subject, or situation.”1 Strand, then, is also one of the many textile words our language uses to describe and contain our experiences.

I began by making many samples to test the yarn, rate of increases and decreases, and gauge. Once I had figured out my ideal curve, I drew a sketch and began to knit long, skinny, wriggling strands. With a palette of seven colours of wool yarn, I knit each strand by beginning with two colours, swapping one hue out for another at the completion of each curve. This created seven marled blocks of colour in each strand and an overall organization to movement to the pattern and colours.

As I finished and washed each strand, I would link it with the prior one until I had created six in total; the resulting piece is roughly the size of a lap blanket. It is flat but the shape curves in and out at the edges. Weaving is all about right angles, so making this completely wiggly piece was a fun exercise in shape and form.

The residency also has loom with a Toika ES unit, which sits where the upper jacks are on Scandinavian-type looms. All shafts are fed into this unit with Texsolv cords, and once you’ve drafted your pattern using WeavePoint software, you plug the unit into your computer and press a pedal to lift and lower the shafts. The loom at DVS has 24 shafts - sixteen more than I have in my studio, so trying it really felt like an obligation!

Continuing on with my motif, the curve, I plotted three unique curving strands using a block weave, and repeated them across the width of my cloth. I used cotton weaving yarn I’d bought in Sweden and leftover yarn from knitting.

Weaving was fairly straightforward using the unit, if a little boring — I found I missed the material feedback, physicality of pressing treadles, and the embodied understanding of where I was in the pattern. But at the same time, the computer unit allowed me to weave something that would have been next to impossible with a traditional set up —I wouldn’t have had enough treadles!

(For the non-weaver readers, the treadles (pedals) of your loom are connected to the shafts, which hold the threads. You “program” each treadle to lift a whichever shafts needed to make your pattern work, but looms generally have a fixed amount of treadles; four shaft looms usually have six, eight shaft have ten, and so on. My pattern would have needed many more treadles than would exist or be practical to use, so the computerization made a monumental task possible!).

During the same weekend as Ovnhus, the mill held an open house so my two fellow residents and I had a small exhibition to share what we’d made.

I exhibited a trio of pieces: my knit curves, my woven strands, and my finished basket — or, in Danish, my kurv. I really love the delightful symmetry of kurv sounding much like the English curve, and all the sinuous strands of wool and willow interlacing and looping together to make three very different material forms.

I see the knit piece as vertical curves, working upwards; the woven piece more like waves or strands of seaweed, moving horizontally; the basket is curves round and round in a spiral that holds space and shape.

The privilege of being able to attend a residency like this and make time and space to try something new is a wonderful thing, but the best part of the experience was all the wonderful people I met, many of whom I haven’t shared or introduced through these essays.

I had many thoughtful conversations with Gertrud in Copenhagen, and Pia and Peter at DVS; meals and hellos with Gitte, Soren and Jes at K12; forest chanterelles and eco-prints with new friends Iben and René. And of course, so much making, eating, and adventuring with my two exceptional co-residents, Alisha and Yili, who worked on weaving, felting, and dyeing projects while I knit and wove. The real gift of this residency was time with you!

I would like gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, for my residency at Det Vilde Spinderi, as well as the support of the Guild of Canadian Weavers.

Soft Curve, Hard Line

Before I get into the heart of this newsletter, I’d like to share my upcoming exhibition this month as part of the DesignTO Festival.

Soft Curve, Hard Line is a collaborative installation with my friend and colleague, Helen Kong of Secret Teatime, and is a playful exploration of how checks and grids contrast aesthetically and functionally between ceramic and textile mediums.

By layering and juxtaposing hand woven textiles and ceramic forms, we seek to create the illusion of one work as well as generate a complex visual conversation. The title of the installation refers back to these contrasts: what is soft, hard, curved or a straight line is open to interpretation, as shape and form blend, clash, and dissolve between pieces.

Soft Curve, Hard Line is in the window of Souk and Silk at 789 Dundas St. West, Toronto, from January 23-February 1, 2026.

Helen and I have also been invited as panelists for a conversation called Within the Weave, happening on Sunday February 1st from 2-3pm at the Collective Arts Taproom, 777 Dundas St West, Lower Level (very conveniently located right next to our exhibition!). Hope to see you there!

Weaving (Sticks)

Like many professional craft artists, my hobbies tend to be… work adjacent. One such pursuit is basketry. Many years ago I wove a random weave basket with foraged weeping willow, soaking the branches in my bathtub and making it up as I went along. Several years later, a friend taught me how to properly weave with real basketry willow, and I’ve made a basket or two most years since. I’m not very good and it can be physically challenging for my hands, but the process of creating a 3d form from a bundle of sticks is rewarding. It’s both familiar and so wildly dissimilar from what I do on the loom that there’s no mistaking that weaving, in this context, is a different thing entirely.

When I shared my plans to head to Denmark, my basketry friends were very generous in sharing tips on weavers and teachers, connecting me with Steen H Madsen.

I arrived at Steen’s thatched roof studio, Hilda’s Hus, in the middle of the Sjælland countryside during a rainstorm, damp from trying to out-ride the clouds, to a studio redolent with woodsmoke and the distinct scent of willow.

As I dried up and looked around the basket-filled studio, we were joined by some of his friends bearing (hand made) baskets full of food and sat down for coffee, tea, and what I would call brötchen and I’m sure the Danes call something else (perhaps rundstykker?) — bread rolls with cheese and jam and other yummy things. After that, it was time to get to work!

It’s been at least a year, maybe more, since I last wove a basket, so I was a bit out of practice. I knew the vague size and shape of basket I wished to make, and let Steen guide me as if I was a complete novice — thankfully, my hands remembered the basics of what to do!

When a basket is built using a radiating base it is called stake and strand basketry, and it is the predominant technique used for willow or cane basketry in the European tradition. Working from the base, the stakes (which, for loom weavers, are the warp) are interlaced with weavers (“strands”; or weft) to build up the shape.

Basketry willow is a fascinating material and very different than garden or wild willow. It’s believed that humans have been making baskets for 10-12,000 years, and these millennia of cultivation has given us many different varieties tuned for different attributes: tall, short, flexible, stiff, and everything in between. Traditional basket crafts like, for example, caskets or withy pot making, would use a variety specially suited to withstand both the making and intended use. (Please see references and resources at the bottom of this post for more on withy pots especially — I find them so interesting.)

And then there’s the colour, too! Basketry willow is cultivated for colour just as much as its physical characteristics. Every time I’ve made a new basket, I’ve gotten to know a new-to-me variety, many who have evocative names like Acutifolia, Green Edna, Bleu, or Rubykins. In Spring of 2025 I planted ten plants of the variety Salix purpurea ‘Packing Twine’ in my front yard; it creates long and slender medium green rods with a slight rosiness.

At home, I’ve made more baskets with colourful bark than without, but Steen shared that it was his preference to use the barkless willow. These rods have had the bark removed through various processes, resulting in a smooth rod. Buff willow refers to barkless rods that have been boiled or steamed before the bark is removed, which gives a golden, brown, or even black colour from the natural chemicals in the bark.

Whether you weave with bark on or off is mainly, these days, an aesthetic choice, but it does have some benefits, especially in a workshop context. To get willow bendy enough to be shaped into a basket, it needs to soak, usually for several days, depending on how long and thick the rods are. Peeled willow has a much shorter soaking time and therefore dries quicker too, which can help prevent your finished basket from getting mouldy. Peeled willow is also more pliable and soft, which is especially obliging for out-of-practice hands (like mine).

Our baskets grew in good company, with neighbour Pil and friend Pia joining us on the first day. Steen and Pia are building a database of European artworks and paintings that depict basketry to better understand the where, why, and when basket forms were used and originated. Much like textiles, baskets are so expected and commonplace in historic artwork that they are next to invisible, but once you know to look, they pop up in all sorts of paintings, prints, and even sculptures. If you work at a museum or gallery, Steen and Pia would love to know about the baskets that appear in the works in your collection (especially if you can provide an image for their research purposes).

After a long day of weaving, our baskets went out into the damp grass outside the studio doors, and Steen and I had dinner together back at his house, which was, like the studio, covered in sticks and baskets. Steen’s long life of learning, making, and collecting was very evident through the many, many, MANY baskets collected from all over the world, made from materials like birch roots, wood, and even plastic — incidentally, the growth of the plastics industry in the 1950’s is why so many willow industries died, as the traditional craft and use of willow baskets was replaced by this less expensive and labour-intensive material. Of course, I would argue that the real cost plastic is extraordinarily and unsustainably expensive, since it contaminates our food and water supply, creates climate-damaging emissions, microplastics, and won’t biodegrade as willow does, but that’s perhaps a different article…

Along his windows were many small treasures, like a Sami carved spoon, replica iron spearheads, and a bronze age axehead he found in a field as a child (!). I was very tired by this point and my brain was overloaded by remembering and learning new weaving techniques, and meeting new people, but I would have liked to hear the story behind each object in his collection. Steen’s interest in history, tools, and making goes back to his youth, where he learned flint knapping at a archaeological research centre in Lejre. He told me that he had originally thought to be an archaeologist, but that in practice there was too much reading and not enough digging!

On day two, we got back to weaving after fortifying with more buns. My basket, by this point, had gone through two rounds of French randing, where there’s a weaver (weft) in between each stake (warp) and you weave around in a circle, manipulating each rod so they go in front and then behind a stake, like the under and over of plain weave. In this section, I used a bark-on willow.

In between the areas of French randing there is 4/1 waling, which adds stability to the basket’s shape. Waling is a slightly different technique in which two groups of weavers (in this instance, four on each hemisphere of the basket) “chase” each other around the basket, going over two and behind one stake. The waling in my basket is easy to see because it’s peeled willow.

At the very top there is another round of waling and then you weave a border using what’s left of the stakes, which get gently folded and threaded behind and around each other. Lastly, I added a handle and a foot (which keeps the base of your basket off the ground), both techniques that were new for me.

Another neighbour, Signe, and her son had joined us that day, and after the weaving was complete, Signe generously took us to visit her farm down the road. Bjerregaarden is a 30 year old organic apple orchard, producing cider from over 50 different apple varieties.

Signe took us on a tour through her vegetable garden and orchard, telling Steen and I about their process of making sparking cider and sparkling rhubarb cider, caring for trees, farming organically, and the history of the farm. You may enjoy watching this short video (in Danish) from TV2Øst where you can see more of the farm and hear Signe speak.

Visit and basket finished, I waved goodbye to Steen, hopped back on my bike, and took a winding countryside route up to a nearby town to catch the bus back to Nykøbing. I had an incredible visit with the generous Steen, and friends Pia, Pil, Signe and her son, and I think about them every time I use my basket.

In each newsletter I feel like I could say “this was the best part of my trip,” or “I learned so much,” and it’s always true — while it was only two days, this interlude felt particularly expansive because of everything new I learned with my hands and head. Many, many thanks to Steen for hosting me! He teaches regularly across Scandinavia and occasionally overseas — he’s got many 2026 courses planned already, which you can see on his workshop page.

If you’re in Ontario, consider taking a class with Johnny Suderman/Lakeshore Willows — you can also buy willow and cuttings from him too.

Ovnhus

In my last weekend in Nykøbing, a craft show came to town: OvnHus. This three-day market takes place annually on the 4th weekend in July and hosts around 75 professionals working in ceramics, textiles, glass, and more. Nykøbing is only an hour and a half or so from Copenhagen by train (less if you drive), and so it’s a wonderful opportunity for locals, city folk, and tourists to visit this small town and support Danish craft.

Two makers I enjoyed at OvnHus were Lærke Møller Hansen, and Birgit Daa Birkkjær.

Lærke works under the name Danish Clay Design, and I had passing familiarity with her work through the Toast New Makers program. Working in stoneware, Lærke creates earthy, sturdy functional tableware, developing glazes using locally sourced materials like wood ash and sand near her studio in a former blacksmith’s workshop near Odense, Denmark.

Birgit also makes vessels, using paper, linen, horsehair and wood, crafting delicate woven and twined baskets and sculptures. I particularly liked the strands of hanging baskets, that twirled and shook in the breeze from the edge of her tent. Some of the sculptural pieces combined small baskets with foraged wood from near her home. Her work was quiet and beautiful, with a wonderful material personality.

I didn’t take many pictures at OvnHus because it was a busy and exciting weekend — we hosted a small exhibition at Det Vilde Spinderi on the Saturday and had many visitors too — but I’ll share more about it, and what I and my co-residents made, next month.

I would like gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for my residency at Det Vilde Spinderi.

References & Further Reading

For more on withy pots, I recommend these two videos available on Youtube:
- Less than 10 traditional willow lobster pot makers remain.
- Weaving Lobster Pots.

“Basket Making.” Heritage Crafts UK. https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/craft/basket-making/ January 11, 2026.

“Threads 90: The Wonderful World of Willow - The History and Traditions of Willow.” Lanark Highlands Basketry Museum. https://www.lanarkhighlandsbasketrymuseum.ca/blog/threads-90-the-wonderful-world-of-willow-the-history-and-traditions-of-willow January 11, 2026.

“Toast of the Town” World of Interiors. https://www.worldofinteriors.com/story/toast-new-makers-2025 January 11, 2026.

Wright, Dorothy. The Complete Book of Basketry. Dover Publications Inc, 1992.

• A short pause on Danish stories.

• Soft Curve, Hard Line - an exhibition with Helen Kong.

• Upcoming workshops.

Greetings,

I am pausing my storytelling from Denmark for December so that I can finish my fall grading and prepare for a small exhibition in January — and have a bit of a rest after a very busy term. I’ll be back in January with more, so if you’ve been enjoying it (and I thank you for all the nice messages), rest assured the series will continue in 2026.

That being said, I have a few things to share in this month’s newsletter!

Soft Curve, Hard Line

I’m pleased to share that I will have a window installation in January 2026 as part of the 2026 DesignTO Festival in Toronto. It’s titled Soft Curve, Hard Line, and is a collaboration with friend/ceramicist Helen Kong.

Helen and I have worked together several times in the past, and in this installation we explore the visual language of checks, squares, and lines and how they converse, distort, and change between ceramic and textile mediums. Which is meant to be the soft curve or the hard line is up to you!

Soft Curve, Hard Line will be available for view from January 23-February 1, 2026 in the window of Souk & Silk at 789 Dundas Street West, Toronto. You can find a map and more information at the exhibition listing here.

We’re not hosting an opening or closing reception, but Helen and I will be participating in the DesignTo Talk Within the Weave on the last day of the festival, Sunday, February 1, 2026. This conversation will trace “the meeting points of material and memory” by bringing us together with two other artists participating in the festival, Jennifer Coghill and Kathleen Morris. Helen is doing double duty that weekend by participating in the Toronto Tea Festival, where she usually has some of my tea textiles for sale.

Some other textile-based DesignTO exhibitions you may wish to see include:

• Assembly Not Required, by members of the Contemporary Textile Studio Cooperative.

• The Flax Project, by Rachel MacHenry, Emma Piercey, and Mika Soetaert.

• Nature Textures, by Michèle Guevara.

• Soft Grid, by Shao-Chi Lin.

• Wild Teachings: through watersheds and bloodstreams, by Kathleen Morris.

Upcoming Workshops

My very popular Weave A Scarf class at the Art Gallery of Burlington is back for two winter sessions:

• Saturday from 1-4pm on January 24th, 31st, and February 7th, 2026.

• Wednesday from 6:30-9:30pm on February 11th, 18th, and 25th, 2026.

This class is geared towards people who have never used a loom or wish to try a rigid heddle loom. After three sessions (and with a bit of homework in between), you’ll have a finished wool scarf to wear and enjoy. It’s a straightforward and easy class and I think we always have a lot of fun. Here are the seven fresh-from-the-loom scarves created during the last session (they need a good wash and a fringe trim, which is why they still look a big scraggly!).

Thank you to everyone who reads, likes, or pays for a subscription to this newsletter! I really appreciate that so many people choose to have this come into their inbox each month. Wishing you a wonderful and peaceful end to 2025.

Amanda

Textile Adventures in Sweden

Halfway through my time at DVS, I went over to Sweden (again) to visit my friend Linda. I know — this is supposed to be about my time in Denmark, but this weekend with Linda was all about weaving and textiles! It would be a shame not to share some of what we did together.

Linda planned an incredible 2.5 days of textile field trips for us that had us driving all around Skåne in its summer finest, while dipping in and out of loppis (thrift stores) hunting for treasure. I had such a wonderful time visiting her and I still think about what we did together all the time.

We began the weekend at Hemslöjden i Skåne in Landskrona, the regional branch of Hemslöjden, the National Federation of Swedish Handicraft Associations. At Hemslöjden i Skåne they have a small gallery, shop where you can buy craft, books, and materials, as well as a workshop where they run courses.

Linda is also a weaver and so it was natural to spend our time together geeking out and visiting places she’s never had the opportunity to go to before. One of our stops (after we had scratched our thrift-store itch in several places) was the Svenska VävstolsMuseet (Swedish Loom Museum) in Glimåkra.

This small museum opened in 1995 and has a permanent exhibition of looms, tools, and textiles, as well as a small gallery where an exciting exhibition of double weaves by Dutch weaver Sytze Roos was on display.

Roos begins designing his weaves on the computer, constructing unique textiles with two differently patterned sides. He tests his designs on a computer-controlled handloom before moving the final production of functional textiles (like scarves or blankets) to a computerized power loom. In the exhibition text, Roos describes himself as a “weaver on the move,” constantly searching for new iterations and interventions he can insert into a mechanized process. The text notes that Roos will often stop the loom to tweak or change the pattern or colour, ensuring his textiles are constantly evolving from human creative input.

In this exhibition, small handkerchief-sized samples were beautifully displayed by hanging them on transparent wire from the ceiling. This gave them movement, but also allowed you to see both sides and follow threads as they switched back and forth from front to back. The museum had small samples for sale, so I was able to bring one home with me — it defies my understanding in a very pleasurable way, and getting to peek between the layers is fascinating!

The museum has a charming little cafe area where you are surrounded by gorgeous hand towels, and there are several unusual looms and equipment throughout the old building.

A Visit to Båstad and the MMF Studio

Linda couldn’t have been a better host nor could she have picked a better place to visit for our second day of field trips when we drove up the coast to visit the Märta Måås-Fjetterström studio in Båstad.

I have long admired the work from this studio, which was founded over 100 years ago by artist and designer Märta Måås-Fjetterström (MMF). Born in 1873, MMF dreamt of being an artist and moved to Stockholm from rural Skåne as a teenager to pursue drawing and painting.

MMF began her professional career as a drawing teacher, but after having several of her drawings woven by the Lund Museum of Cultural History, she began to see the potential in creating new, modern designs for gobelin-style tapestry and rölakan (flatweave) rugs.

In the publication Look At the Rugs — Find Me, the editors note that William Morris and John Ruskin’s ideas and ideals about craftsmanship and beauty were a very popular topic for MMF and her friends during her school years, and, while she received training as a weaver, much like Morris (and Vibeke Klint) she operated more as a designer and studio manager, overseeing a team of weavers to produce her designs.

Look At The Rugs — Find Me (written in both English and Swedish) outlines MMF’s career and highlights several important commissions and projects, and is beautifully illustrated with many of the original drawings of some of her most famous designs. It describes her as a “reserved individualist who disliked following the herd,” (Bragfors) with strong ideas on what needed to happen for craft to remain relevant and desirable.

MMF felt that the future of craft lay in strong leadership and organization as well as fair payment for work. In many ways, this attitude was far ahead of her time and at odds with her contemporaries; while serving as director of the Malmö county handcrafts association, for example, she was sacked by traditionalist board members for trying to put her modern ideas into practice!

MMF died in 1941 but her studio continues to this day, producing her designs as well as those of subsequent artistic directors, such as Barbro Nilsson, Marianne Richter, and Ann-Mari Lindbom, as well as other creative collaborations.

The showroom in Båstad was full of samples as well as finished rya, flossa, and rölakan rugs and it was really special to visit. We’re so lucky that we can share pictures and see the world from our screens, but… a picture is flat. When it comes to textiles, the experience is created not only by your eyes, but the feel of it in your hands, under your feet, the way it crinkles, or the yarn moves. Getting to browse through samples while standing on a rug, surrounded by finished work and sketches and looms was both deeply moving and inspiring in equal measure.

Linda started talking with the woman at the front desk and through working some sort of magic, we were invited to have a look in the studio’s yarn storage. They work with several different types and plies of wool as weft1, and use linen or wool warp depending on the type of rug they are making. Dyeing is done on site, and samples of colours were kept stored on a ring at the end of each row. We geeked out — what else is there to say?

Linda and my visit to MMF was a highlight of my time in Scandinavia. Not only was it great to spend time with Linda, but what we saw together was tremendously inspiring and creatively fulfilling. MMF represents craft work at the highest level of skill and beauty, and I was only sorry that there were no weavers working when we visited — it was their day off!

I returned to my work at DVS really excited to continue experimenting and making things — which we’ll get to next month.

Canadian Wool Conversations

One of the ongoing threads of interest in my work and through my time in Denmark and Sweden this summer is wool. I feel very strongly about sustainability and ensuring that my work makes a minimal impact on the environment, and wool has always felt like an obvious way for me to practice those ideas. Because wool is produced right on my doorstep here in Ontario, it’s an excellent method for reducing my carbon footprint and fostering a deeper understanding of where, why, and how my materials are made.

Therefore, I was thrilled to attend the Canadian Wool Conversations conference on November 13, 2025, hosted by the Canadian Wool Council and The Campaign for Wool at this year’s Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, in Toronto.

Through four engrossing sessions, artists, makers, students, farmers, producers, designers, and other wool-passionate professionals shared ideas, knowledge, and visions for Canadian and regional wool systems. Panelists shared fascinating insights into research and development from their professional areas; for example, did you know that keratin, the structural material that makes up hair, wool, scales, feathers, and hooves (among other things), is being explored as a bioplastic? Or that wool is biogenic, which means that it’s actually carbon negative, not just carbon neutral?!2

Through speakers such as Brenda Hsueh of Black Sheep Farm, I learned about more practical aspects of regenerative agriculture, like managed grazing and silvopastures. I was fascinated by Jasper Brand’s presentation on his family’s company, Brand Felt3, and the many uses of wool felt in industry and interiors. The wool gear was remarkable!

We have incredible farmers and makers producing everything from fleece to yarn to textiles to garments within a 250km radius of Toronto, and it was very stimulating to listen to and participate in conversations about how this valuable resource can be better promoted and used. The atmosphere at the conference was encouraging, collegial, and collaborative — what a pleasure to be among people who want to support each other instead of compete.

There were many moments during the day when topics or points would be raised that were the same things I spoke about with the director at DVS or when talking with the MMF staff. Wool is an under utilized but incredibly flexible resource, both in Canada and Europe. A lot of the annual shearing is wasted through poor processing and distribution networks, a lack of education or knowledgeable technicians/makers, or outdated ideas about softness or usability, not to mention the competitive capitalist vision of scaling up up up that doesn’t actually serve communities, famers, or consumers!

This program was a really exciting opening to a (hopefully) longterm conversation about how we can continue to use wool in Canada and beyond. I don’t use a huge amount of local wool in my pattern design (being hyper-local, it’s harder for folks outside of Canada to find), but I’ve got an artistic project coming up in January where I use Ontario wool — I’ll share more about that next month, when I haven’t already written so much!

I would like gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for my residency at Det Vilde Spinderi.

References

Bragfors, Ehrling, Angelica Persson, Ulrik Swedrup, editors. “Look at the Rugs - Find Me: 100 Years of Textile Art - Since 1919”. Märta Måås-Fjetterström AB, 2019.

I’ve also included a few other studio notes at the very end — the usual stuff! Thanks!

Day Trip to Malmö

In my first few days in Denmark, I visited museums like the Design Museum (see September 2025), and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and walked around to see what I could encounter. I found plenty of great places to eat a bun (Meyers Bageri), have tea (Sing Tehus), and browse a bookstore (Cinnober Bookshop).

One day trip I was excited to make was to Malmö, Sweden, a short trip across the Øresund by train. I was very fortunate to be given some excellent recommendations on what to do there by new friend Steen H Madsen (I’ll introduce Steen properly in another newsletter), and so I’d like to share some of my day in Malmö, much of which is thanks to his excellent suggestions.

The Form/Design Center

My first stop was the Form/Design Center in central Malmö. It’s probably easiest to describe it as an art gallery, but I got the sense it was much more — and more interesting — than that term might imply.

Founded in 1964, the Form/Design Center focuses on exhibiting craft, design, and architectural projects, as well as acting as a resource and meeting place for the public and industry. Beyond exhibitions, they offer public programming for people of all ages, and collaborate with academia, the public sector, and related organizations. Located in an old granary, there were three exhibitions on when I visited: Cotton Candy Wonder Wool, Transformation, Adaptive Reuse, and Circular Construction, and In the Making.

In Cotton Candy Wonder Wool (June 19, 2025 - August 17, 2025) the artist Ida Pettersson Preutz presented colourful, graphic, and illusory textile works created using sewing and knitting. Her process for the sewn and pieced works was especially interesting and labour intensive. They begin with small-scale sketches or material studies based on geometric shapes and patterns. The fabric is then screenprinted with patterns in bright, flat colours and cut into smaller pieces, which are pieced and sewn together to create shifting optical illusions — patterns within patterns within patterns.

Pettersson Preutz notes that while it would be easier to draw the optical illusions than go through the process of draw, print, cut and sew, the translation into a textile medium feels especially essential for the success and outcome of the illusion. The distortion, sway, and movement that cloth provides breaks the smoothness of the surface and its perfection. You know you’re not looking at something printed or flat, but your eye still wants to believe otherwise.

This also results in a really unique experience — up close, you can see the individual blocks and the pattern, but from farther away, the vibrancy of the colours and repetition of pattern work together to appear 3D. All the repeated patterns, motifs, and colours were so energetically charged that they really start to come off the wall — it reminded me of the Magic Eye books that were popular when I was a kid, where you’d stare at a dense image and an unrelated shape or figure would float out towards you.

The knitted works, which were displayed on pink plinths in the center of the gallery, play with similar themes of colour, pattern, and illusion. Some of the same motifs were rendered both in knit and patchwork, and it was fun to see how they changed and behaved depending on the medium.

Transformation, Adaptive Reuse, and Circular Construction featured the thesis work of masters students from the School of Architecture at Lund University that explored circular and transformative architectural projects through case studies and site-specific investigations, but I was really interested in to the exhibition alongside it, In the Making: Artistic Methods in Architecture and Design.

Through 26 projects produced by students and researchers at the Royal Danish Academy, artistic methods were applied to educational activities in architecture, design, and conservation. Not all 26 projects were on display, but several textile-based projects piqued my interest, like The Common Nettle, Comprehending Biogenic Materials, and the Mariebjerg textile. On display was the wonderful Model Architecture; A House of Models, made of cardboard, clay, plastic, wood, and other materials that celebrated the model as an essential and poetic part of architectural practice.

Moderna Museet Malmö

My next stop was the Moderna Museet to see the Kiki Smith exhibition Woven Worlds. Kiki Smith is an American artist who uses drawing, printmaking, and sculpture to explore ideas such as the female body, natural world, folk tales, and regeneration. In Woven Worlds, large scale works on paper were scanned and transformed into Jacquard textiles. Both paper and textile were displayed alongside each other with some of Smith’s sculptural works. I really appreciated seeing the textiles next to their prints; each material picked up different elements, so that varying parts of the dense and multilayered imagery were foregrounded or backgrounded depending on what piece you were looking at. Faces, lines, creatures and textures were sharper or softer, denser or lighter, shimmering or flat.

The textile works are woven at Magnolia Editions in California. Smith sends her original collaged prints (which usually begin as etchings or lithographs) for digitization; she then paints on the digitized prints and sends them back to be rescanned and woven. Even though the final works are textiles, she sees the process as an extension of her practice in printmaking, where an original (in this case, the drawing/painting) can be used to make infinite editions.

She very pointedly notes in the exhibition catalogue that while she respects hand crafts and those engaging in this type of skilled labour, she is not at all interested in hand weaving. You can, however, sense that she is thinking very deeply about textiles as a medium — it’s not just a gimmick or new way to print her drawings. She refers to textiles as holy, and says that weaving “is our inheritance as people.” (Wallner/Mattern)

My favourite piece was Spinners (2014) and its digital sketch, in which spiders, moths, water, a feather, and waving willow wands create a vibrant and living world. One of the functions of art is (in my opinion, at least) to allow you to glimpse the way another person sees the world. In practice, however, not every work takes you there; sometimes it’s more about beauty, skill, or meaning.

With Woven Worlds, the dense layering of textures, allusions, animal familiars, and materials tells a enigmatic tale that brings all of those elements together. I keep thinking of C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where the children find the extraordinary world of Narnia in the back of an everyday cupboard; these pieces were the same, presenting everyday creatures interacting in the midst of a rich and compelling story that encouraged imagination over hard answers. Even in the coldness of the white cube, the pieces were warm and alien, familiar and magical. The opening to my notes on this exhibition just says “wow wow wow.”

Scattered throughout the gallery were several sculptures and wall-works that pick up the crumbs seeded by the tapestries: eagles, stars, moons and flowers. In the catalogue (Kiki Smith: verwobene Welten), Smith speaks of her admiration for the Middle Ages and its “rich and sophisticated visual narrative and language,” and “connection between images and belief.” (Wallner/Mattern)

With so many talismanic figures appearing through her work, this reference felt very salient to me, but I appreciated her dry resistance to ascribing meaning or interpretation. In the catalogue she says, “My interest is not in the subjects but how a subject can have many different lives through many materializations. Material brings meaning.”

Future Visits

The next time I passed through Malmö I had a bag full of weaving yarn and was eager to get back to Nykøbing, so I didn’t stop. Several places I wanted to visit that I couldn’t make it to are:

• The Cloth Lab: A “creative hub dedicated to sustainable textile and garment design” by Birgitta Helmmerson and Sam Grose. Their super cool approach, projects, and patterns can be found in Helmmerson’s two English language books, Zero Waste Patterns and Sewing With Scraps.

• MalmöVÄV: A non-profit association and artist’s workplace by and for weavers and other craft workers. (Instagram).

• Malmö Konsthall: A free contemporary art museum.

• Ribersborgs Kallbadhus: Open air bathing and sauna.

• Malmö Saluhall: Steen recommended I have lunch here!

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Studio Updates

Closer to home, I’ve been busy as usual (perhaps busier than comfortable). Some things I’d like to share:

Last September I mentioned that I had worked on a project for a film — and now it’s out! I wove a scarf for Wayward, out from September 25th, 2025 on Netflix. The scarf is worn by Toni Collette’s character during a scene called “the leap” in the final episode of the series. The project brief was for a piece of textile art from the 70s using different weights of yarn in a specific palette. Here is an image of a sample and the finished scarf — you’ll just have to watch the show if you’d like to see it in context.

Gist Yarn has recently released an adapted version of the Seed Pod Towels. Christine and I independently decided to re-do this pattern at the same time, and it’s been great fun to see how the same project has diverged and changed. I think of weaving patterns much like I do a recipe: the pattern provides the outline, but each chef chooses their own ingredients. The towels are soft, thick, and completely different from the original as well as the variation available on my website. A small tweak to the draft and different materials can have a big impact!

One of the MA candidates at the my university is currently running a research survey collect insights from Ontario sheep farmers, wool processors, and fibre professionals. If you use Ontario wool in your practice and think you may be able to help Wen Shen understand “the current challenges and opportunities within the province’s wool sector and help identify ways to support small-scale, sustainable fibre systems,” your response would be greatly appreciated!

Please visit the survey here: https://forms.gle/FtC5V6cdXXk9JJzf7 It should take ~15 minutes of your time and is open to Ontario-based farmers, processors, and fibre professionals. This research survey is REB Approved: TMU REB #2025-381

And lastly, the Ontario Fibreshed has a new video initiative called the Circular Series. It’s “a storytelling project created in collaboration with TMU interns, sharing the journey of fibre from farm to fashion.” Yours truly has given a typically awkward interview for Series 2, but you can watch the first series of interviews here, with Megan Cleland, artist, Jeanette Lourens of Red Maple Homestead, and Rachel MacHenry, Assistant Professor at TMU.

And lastly, there are still spaces in some workshops I have coming up:

• Weave a Scarf at the Art Gallery of Burlington. Session 2 starts November 5th.

• Colour for Knitters on Saturday November 8 from 12-4pm, at Unwind Yarn House in Newmarket, Ontario. This is a new workshop that’s about creative process and gaining colour confidence and is especially for knitters (but all yarn folks are welcome!).

More to come in November’s newsletter!

I would like gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for my residency at Det Vilde Spinderi.

References

Mattern, Julia and Julia Wallner. Kiki Smith: verwobene Welten. Wienand, 2024.

I’ve also included upcoming workshops at the very end, in case that interests you. Thanks!

Det Vilde Spinderi - An Artist Residency in Denmark

This summer I went to Denmark to attend an artist residency at Det Vilde Spinderi. I packed so much into the five and a half weeks I was there that it’s going to take more than one newsletter to share all the things, people, and art I encountered!

A residency is an opportunity for artists to take time away from routine and daily life to research and develop new creative work. It’s also a way to access new or unusual equipment, make connections, meet other artists, and learn about new cultures and contexts all while embedded within a place for several weeks or months.

Det Vilde Spinderi is a textile-based artist residency in the small town of Nykøbing Sj, Denmark, about 1.5 hours from Copenhagen by train. While there are other textile residencies (like the Ós Textile Residency at Textilmiðstöð Íslands/Icelandic Textile Center, which I attended in 2015), DVS is unique in that it’s not just dedicated to supporting artists and creative production — it’s a working yarn mill as well.

I applied to visit Det Vilde Spinderi (DVS) to spend some time using their knitting machines; I decided last year that I wanted to learn something new and, like looms, there aren’t many residencies that have knitting machines! I’ll speak more to what I made while I was there in a later newsletter, but the wide range of tools I had access to at DVS meant I tried more than just the knitting machine — I experimented with the FeltCrafts needle felting machine and the computerized Toika loom, too.

The first thing you’ll see after opening the front door at DVS is distinctive blue mini-mill equipment from Belfast Mini Mills in PEI, Canada. The scale of this equipment is much smaller than that of a traditional mill, offering an opportunity to have your sheep fleece spun into yarn locally, instead of having to send it away. Mini mill equipment is also really cool because it allows farmers to have individual fleeces or small flocks processed, which is often difficult with larger equipment that needs more raw material to work. Because of globalization, many of the local yarn mills that would have filled this role are closed, and the result is that local wool can’t be processed or effectively used. This is not a problem unique to Denmark — it’s much the same in Ontario where I am.

DVS’s aim is to spin wool from Odsherred (the area surrounding Nykøbing) that would otherwise be considered “waste.” Wool is a wonderful material — it can have many different qualities, textures, and softnesses, which means there’s something the wool of every breed of sheep can contribute. Having it processed locally and in small batches is, of course, better for the environment, but also preserves these unique qualities. One type of wool I saw at DVS was Spælsau, which has a two-layered coat and comes in several beautiful natural shades.

There are a range of things that DVS produces, which you can see in the small shop they have next to the mill. There’s yarn, obviously, and the things made from yarn: sweaters, bags, rugs, and other knit, crocheted, and woven items. They can also wash and card fleeces, to speed up the prep for hand spinning, or use the needle felting machine to turn it into felted sheets.

Up the spiral staircase from the mill is DVS’s gallery and the residency work space. In the gallery, you can see a permanent exhibition of woollen works from the mill: a wonderful children’s hut, felted sheepskins, and these cool sound-absorbent panels made from felted pockets. On the other side, you’ll find the residency workspace with sewing, knitting, and embroidery machines, cutting and making tables, looms, and more.

We’ll come back here in a future newsletter!

More Wool, Colour, and Art in Copenhagen

Before I even made it to DVS, however, I spent several days in Copenhagen (and beyond), acclimatizing (read: eating buns) and absorbing art and culture. I want to share some of that first — since I encountered several wonderful exhibitions and creatives that I think you’ll find interesting too.

While in Copenhagen I stayed in Nørrebro, a neighbourhood north-west of the city centre. One of the first things Gertrud, my host, pointed me towards was Hedestrik, a project that was literally around the corner from her flat. Hedestrik’s mission is to knit with unspun wool and is the project of four friends, Maya Høy, Liva Steuk Hansen, Asta Marie Budde Magaard and Anna Sejerø Svensson. It began in 2022 when two of the friends worked at a farm called Lystbækgaard as shepherds in training and learned you could knit with raw wool.

Like DVS, the first thing you notice when you enter the shop at Lundtoftegade 105 is the smell of raw wool; for Hedestrik, the practice of “dogmestrik” (which translates as “dogme,” dogma + “strik,”) is all about communicating with wool in its most pure and unprocessed form.

To knit a garment at Hedestrik you pull locks from clean, raw fleece, one at a time, spinning them into yarn using the heat and motion of your hands, before knitting them into equally as raw, unique garments. The finished pieces resemble an ancient garment pulled from a bog or something a sheep might make themself.

Working with raw wool means that you can really maximize the unique qualities of a fleece through felting, weaving, knitting, or crochet. The studio was full of baskets of fleece and hangers with garments and fabric. When I visited, I spoke to two interns who showed me their projects; one piece was a felted pullover with an integrated neck wrap/scarf — you can see it on Marain, the maker, on Hedestrik’s IG.

Hedestrik has an Instagram account and (Danish) website, as well as the physical shop, which was a delight to visit! You can learn more about Hedestrik in the latest issue of Copenhagen-based bookazine HÅNDVÆRK1, which came out this September. The Wool issue is the perfect place to spotlight the Hedestrik team, and learn about their process and practice.

I’ve wanted a copy of HÅNDVÆRK, which “portrays the living, changing practice of design and craft through in-depth interviews and portraits painted in both words and images,” for many years, so I was thrilled to pick one up while I was in Copenhagen. Each issue, which is entirely written, designed, and photographed by Rigetta Klint, takes an in-depth look at a single topic, like wood, decoration, or fashion. As a paper-media/analog sort of person, I feel like I’m always on the hunt for the perfect magazine, and HÅNDVÆRK comes pretty darn close!!

The interviews in the issue I picked up (issue 12, colour), range from recipes for Swedish rödfarg paint, handmade pastels from Chalk Copenhagen, klinker bricks in Landskrona, Sweden, and conversations with creatives like Astrid Skibsted (weaver), Margarethe Odgaard (textile and colour designer), and Anne Sofie Slot Thybo of Thybo Hand Dyed.

Design Museum Denmark & The Power of Print

I found a copy of HÅNDVÆRK at the Design Museum Denmark. Everyone recommended I go there while in Copenhagen, and I was lucky enough to visit while one of their special exhibitions was all about textiles!

The Power of Print (May 22, 2025 to January 4, 2026) showcases “textiles from the greatest Danish fabric printers throughout history, and [displays] new textiles from a select group of the most skilled textile printers of our time. The exhibition tells the story of an overlooked area in Danish craftsmanship and design, and for the first time, the lavish collection of Danish printed textiles … is presented on such a large scale”

Prints, drawings, sketches, and lengths of printed cottons and linens from the early part of the 20th century onwards show how the development of the golden age of Danish design happened in tandem with the textile design innovations of several influential women designers.

Interestingly, while the prints feel familiar and recognizable today, the exhibition explains that until the middle of the 20th century, Denmark didn’t have a tradition of print design. It was the tenacity and vision of two artists, Marie Gudme Leth, and Gudrun Stig Aagaard, that elevated textile printing in the mid 1930s.

It began after Leth visited a screen-printing factory in Germany; seeing the potential for a domestic industry, she set up a workshop when she returned to Denmark and was, a year later, introducing her own textile prints for interior design and fashion.

These early prints were very simple: each motif in a design stood separate from the other, and and colour was applied very intensely. After the “grey glumness” (Zahle 17) of the post-war years, Danish screen-printers had developed a powerful visual language with bold, simple geometric patterns, and by the late 1950s, there was a flourishing market for mass-produced textiles produced by and in Denmark.

One of the major players in this industry was a company called Cotil, founded by the company C. Olesen in Copenhagen in 1957. Cotil’s philosophy was simple: artists and designers could anonymously submit proposals to an impartial jury, which would select the prints (and woven fabrics) for production2.

This anonymity meant that selections were based on artistic quality rather than name recognition or previous market success, and allowed for unexpected voices to emerge. Cotil’s prints and woven textiles were an enormous success, attracting designers that are now well recognized domestically and internationally, like Arne Jacobsen, Børge Mogensen, and Vibeke Klint (more on her shortly!).

It was hard to choose favourites from among these “historical” works from the Design Museum’s collection. So many of them felt as fresh and modern as they must have in the 60s or 70s. This through-line to contemporary practice was underscored by a newly commissioned exhibition displaying the work of eight prominent contemporary female textile designers who use hand printing techniques to focus on creative artistic expression.

There were several pieces from this exhibition that were very inspiring. Lisbet Friis’ energetic and vibrating “Magic Checks - Blurred Vision” fabrics looked woven, but are actually created using screen printing, reactive dyes, and etching (you can see more images on her Instagram). I also loved work by Else Borup Kallesøe and the jiggling stripes of Bitten Hegelund.

This exhibition was fascinating and engrossing; I spent 3 hours at the museum, and I was so overstimulated I had to sit in the courtyard and have my lunch halfway through. In one room there were several wooden cases with small drawers; each drawer was filled with different textile samples or fragments, sketches and production notes — opening each drawer (which I did!) felt like getting to continually unwrap a gift. There’s a publication that accompanies the exhibition that looks wonderful, too: Danish Textile Prints - 100 Years of Craft and Design by Kirsten Toftegaard.

The Power of Print and an exhibition of designer Anders Hermansens’s fascinating metal “sketches” were half the museum; the other half was the permanent collection, which was just as good as the special exhibitions! Of particular interest for me were the rugs and textile pieces of Vibeke Klint, presented alongside and underneath the famous pieces of midcentury modern furniture and design that Denmark is known for.

Vibeke Klint

Vibeke Klint (1927-2019) was a Danish designer and weaver who practiced during the golden age of Danish design. From a young age Vibeke decided she would be an artist, partly because she wanted to avoid staying at home, the primary occupation for Danish women in her day. Vibeke said that her discovery of weaving was a “coincidence. One day I had the opportunity to see how the work at a weaving workshop took place. I thought it looked like fun and exciting — and so I got started. Now I am happy in the job. It’s a lot more fun than dishwashing and dusting.” (Knudsen 51)

Vibeke attended what’s now known as the Royal Danish Academy/Det Kongelige Akademi, beginning the weaving course in 1946 with the mentorship and guidance of instructor Gerda Henning. When Gerda unexpectedly died in 1951, the opportunity to take over her weaving studio fell into Vibeke’s lap. It was unusual for 24 year old recent graduate to be running her own workshop in the early 50s, but Gerda’s well equipped studio, experienced weavers, and, importantly, clients, gave Vibeke a running start at what would become a long and successful career.

The studio produced a range of textiles for interiors and fashion; designers like Finn Juhl, Børge Mogensen, Hans J. Wegner and Poul Kjaerholm all commissioned work to go with their furniture and architectural projects, praising Vibeke’s modern, simple, and functional style. The clean lines, natural materials and simple colour palettes complimented their work and vision much more than the Oriental rugs3 that had dominated interior fashion in the previous decades.

In 2021, a retrospective book of Vibeke’s preparatory sketches and woven work was published (in English and Danish editions), and is where most of my research for this story came from. Gitte-Annette Knudsen wrote the introduction to The World of Vibeke Klint; she wove several of Vibeke’s designs under her direction and, with Vibeke’s family, selected many of the drawings and sketches from her archive. I love some of the no-nonsense quotes Knudsen includes, like “My rugs are primarily for walking on… I’m not trying to get some artistic message through with my rugs. It is their decorative effect that matters. I do not feel “stepped on” because you walk on the rug. That is what they are meant for.” (Knudsen 57)

She also paints a wonderful picture of a person she knew and worked alongside for many years, and the warm and friendly environment Vibeke created at her home studio; pots and pots of black tea, fresh cake after a successful beaming, babies napping in the garden, and a morning bathe in the sea.

I am always fascinated to peek behind the magician’s curtain of artistic process, so the many drawings, sketches, photographs, and scribbled notes in this publication make it deeply pleasing. For example; several times I noticed an architectural detail on some train stations (alas, I didn’t get a photograph!), only to later see this distinctive pattern echoed and reflected in Vibeke’s drawings and rugs.

Vibeke, although having proficiency and training in weaving, preferred to stay in the background, drawing rugs, running the studio, and directing the weavers and 50 or so apprentices who trained at her home studio over the years.

The legacy of Vibeke Klint’s work and studio is closely intertwined with that of other famous 20th century Danish designers. She, like many of her contemporaries, often worked with and for Cotil, producing consumer curtains, tablecloths, and upholstery fabrics. Drawing on her strong sense of materiality and colour, Vibeke had established herself as a leading designer by the 1960s, creating “whole, quiet surfaces” (Knudsen 72) that underlined the “consistency between quality, simple patterns, and colours.” (Knudsen 73)

In the glut of things to look at when visiting the Design Museum, you might almost miss her rugs, sitting underneath furniture and on the wall — I feel like we have been habituated to ignoring textiles in our interiors, but these pieces reward close looking. As one of the special voices in the golden age of Danish design, Vibeke’s rugs stand out as an exceptional example of the mid-century urge to erase the distinction between art and function.

After her retirement, the studio closed down; Nordic Modern produces several select designs today, while other pieces live in the offices and residences they were made for, and, I hope, a few other museum collections too! The World of Vibeke Klint is well worth finding (and carrying all over Denmark) if you are interested in learning more about her and her practice.

More to come in October’s newsletter! A special thank you to my friend Clementine who read over this abnormal amount of writing for me. ♡

I would like gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for my residency at Det Vilde Spinderi.

Upcoming Workshops

• Weave a Scarf at the Art Gallery of Burlington:
  Session 1 starting October 18th.

  Session 2 starting November 5th.
  

• Colour for Knitters on Saturday November 8 from 12-4pm, at Unwind Yarn House in Newmarket, Ontario. This is a new workshop that’s about creative process and gaining colour confidence and is especially for knitters.

References

Cotil. www.cotil.dk. September 16, 2025.

Knudsen, Gitte-Annette. The World of Vibeke Klint. Haslund Publishing, 2021.

“Vibeke Klint.” Nordic Modern. www.nordicmodern.com/en/pages/vibeke-klint. September 17, 2025.

Zahle Erik, editor. Scandinavian Domestic Design. Methuen & Co Ltd, 1963.

• Adventures in Denmark

• Studio news & updates

• Things to See & Read

Adventures in Denmark

I’m home from a wonderful time in Denmark at Det Vilde Spinderi.

I spent an equal amount of time at the studio and the beach and saw some incredible art and craft work and made exceptional new friends.

I have so much to share that I’ll be using the next several newsletters to unpack my adventures through Nykøbing, Copenhagen, Malmö, Båstad, Haraldsted and elsewhere, introducing you to some of the people, artists, places, and art and craft works I experienced. I’ve come home feeling as though I’ve been away for a lot longer than one month!

Studio News & Updates

Several small things happened while I was away in Denmark.

Gist Yarns has re-released my Tidal Towels pattern using Duet and Mallo, and has added a new treadling variation — the “king tide”, where the wave motif travels the entire length of the towel. I have one of the king tide towels and feels like such a luxurious upgrade to the original way I wove them. The pattern is still free to download and is available on the Gist website here.

While we’re on the Gist website, you may have seen two articles I wrote that were published mid-July: Reading and Understanding Profile Drafts and Understanding Block Weaves Vs Unit Weaves.

If you’ve ever come across a draft like the one above and felt confused as to how it was supposed to be monks belt or summer and winter, this article should help you on your way to understanding profile drafting.

Things to See & Read

There have been so many interesting projects, exhibitions and things I’ve saved lately…

• The Weaving Futures workshop with Blessyl Buan at Craft Ontario “invites participants to explore and engage with traditional Philippine weaving of banig, reinterpreted in a contemporary context using dried palm and upcycled materials. This hands-on community workshop invites participants to contribute to a growing tapestry; The Dream Weave,” which will be part of Nuit Blanche 2025.
  
  This workshop is taking place on Saturday, September 20, from 2:00-4:30pm at Craft Ontario, 1106 Queen Street West, Toronto, ON. Please visit the website to register if you’d like to attend.
  

• More Than Human at the Design Museum London asks why design has traditionally focused exclusively on the needs of humans when we share this earth with animals, plants, and other living beings. It includes an 8 metre long commissioned tapestry by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg titled Pollinator Pathmaker: Perceptual Field.

  

• Another exhibition I’d love to see is Flaxen, by Alice Fox, which can be enjoyed virtually through her newsletter. Alice Fox’s land-based practice thoughtfully engages with flax, thorns, roots, branches and stems through weaving, twining, ink, and basketry. The exhibition is open for a few more days, until August 31, 2025 at Kestle Barton in West Cornwall.
  

• Carpet weaving in Kashan, Iran, in 1989!

• I am really looking forward to hearing artist Ekta Kaul speak at the Contemporary Textile Studio in Toronto on August 28, 2025. In case you haven’t seen her work, Kaul explores stories and place to create highly specific and personal hand-stitched textile maps. She’s also written a book about kantha! You can read more about her on the Tatter website, or visit her Instagram here.

See you next month,

Amanda

• Studio Views

• Things to See & Read

Studio Views

Since my last newsletter I have been doing a lot of teaching and a bit of travelling!

I taught my Stripe Lab workshop twice (learning a lot in the process, as you do…). These are images from the session at Irene Textile. What a space!!! If you find yourself in Montreal, please make sure to visit Yde’s shop — she carries some really unique yarns and materials and is a beautiful working space. I met so many nice people — next time I visit I hope we can meet again :)

While in Montreal we went thrifting and I did not get this hand spun and hand woven coverlet (or the several catalogne I saw) but I gave it the admiration it is due (I am always curious about object histories!). I did, however, get this porcupine quill basket.

We went to see Pounding the Pavement: Montreal Street Photography at the McCord Stewart Museum, and I really enjoyed the craft work on display in Indigenous Voices Today. On the left is a waterproof parka made from animal intestine; it was accompanied by a video with several women talking about the labourious process of preparing the intestines. On the right is a bandolier bag also in the exhibition.

Now I am getting ready for an artist residency in Denmark (naturally this means I am panic weaving/sewing things I am convinced I will need)! I’m going to Det Vilde Spinderi to do a bit of skilling-up and creative exploration. I’m really looking forward to seeing The Power of Print at the Danish Design Museum, featuring the weave-like textile prints of Lisbet Friis, and visiting the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, which every single person has told me is a must-visit. If you’re in Copenhagen, Sjælland or Malmö, Sweden, reach out and maybe we can connect.

Things to See & Read

• If you are in Edmonton, Alberta this June, please go and visit Fern Facette’s exhibition at the Alberta Craft Discovery Gallery! I dearly wish I could see these doubleweave pieces and woven tubes (!) that explore Fern’s experience of an ADHD diagnosis. Exploring neurodiversity through the metaphor of weaving and interlacement, this is Fern’s first solo exhibition and it sounds and looks really beautiful. Congrats Fern!! If you’re visiting or in Edmonton, check out the great workshops she hosts at Fern’s School of Craft, too.

  

• Claudy Jongstra speaks about working with wool and her monumental felt pieces in a recent episode of the Material Matters podcast, underlining her unusually deep commitment to sustainability — she has her own flock and grows all her own natural dyes! As a follow up, I read this article, Claudy Jongstra “Natural Dyes are the gold of the future”, which expands a bit more on her biodynamic farm in Friesland and the many steps her work takes from seed to sheep to art.

• I recently watched this short (7min) film on Sardinian weaving and spinning. My favourite part was when friends of 86 year old Gonaria complain that she never used to visit anyone because she was married to her loom — she is quick to note it still is her passion! I also found it fascinating to see how weaving traditions are shared. Sometimes the textiles reminded me of Moroccan rugs (which makes sense because of Sardinia’s proximity to Al-Andalus and North Africa — no doubt cultural and material trade was rampant!1), and at other times Diné eyedazzlers or Scandinavian/Nordic rugs. It’s a nice reminder of how our textile traditions and visual languages are shared, borrowed, adapted, and enriched through migration and trade.

• Another film! This time a documentary about Justine Aldersey-Williams, the woman who grew flax, spun it into yarn, wove her own linen yardage, and finally sewed her own jeans. Woman Grows Jeans premieres on June 11, 2025 and I am really looking forward to watching it — I’ve linked the trailer below.

• The National Gallery of Victoria in Australia has a new exhibition open called Kimono, which explores the extraordinary impact this garment has had in Japan and worldwide. Displaying both historical and contemporary pieces, I was happy to get a peek through this feature in The Guardian. I’ve seen two exhibitions of kimonos that left lasting impressions: one in Kyoto when I was a student at Kawashima Textile School, and the other was Artistry in Silk: The Kimono of Itchiku Kubota in 2018 at the Textile Museum of Canada.

• Also in the Guardian a few weeks ago was a fascinating visual essay about natural dyeing by Mexico’s indigenous Mixtec people, who “milk” rare Plicopurpura colummelaris snails to get them to excrete a milky substance, which reacts with UV light to turn yarn an indelible purple (the snails go back onto the rocks once the short process is complete). It’s a fascinating story of indigenous knowledge, textile production, and, of course, climate change, the latest threat facing this traditional practice. It’s well worth visiting the article to see the extraordinary shade of violet and witness the landscape this colour comes from and the craft objects these snails contribute to.

This newsletter is taking a summer holiday while I am away in Denmark — see you in late August or September!

Amanda

• Studio Views

• New Pattern! Rosa Wash Cloth

• Save Craft Education in Ontario

• Things to See & Read

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Studio Views

I got a huge dose of new cottolin colours, so I updated my colour library. Very satisfying.

Let’s learn about stripes together this month! As of writing, there are only four spaces left in my class at the Textile Studio Coop on Saturday May 17th in Toronto. I’ll also be in Montreal the following weekend with the same program at Irene Textiles on May 24th and 25th. It looks like the 25th is sold out ☺!

I helped my friend Leo take some pictures of her very first quilt pattern! The Daphne Quilt has three sizes and makes a pleasingly round mat, small quilt, and large quilt. Quilting is wild — as an imperfect but enthusiastic sewer, sewing circles feels like a real flex, but Leo has made it simple to achieve with some clever templates and charts (her method is genius). The PDF is very in-depth but the project is also very straightforward, so I think quilting folks will like the easy challenge!

New Pattern: Rosa Wash Cloth

Last year I spent all my energy on teaching, but now I feel like I have a better handle on it so I’ve been working through a backlog of ideas and projects. This is probably the last one for a while though, so I hope you enjoy it! Here is the Rosa Wash Cloth.

Last year, when I wrote the trio of article on lace weaving for Gist Yarn (articles one, two, and three, if you’re interested), I wanted to spend some more time with the structures and develop some into full projects. I loved the texture I got from lace in my Soap Bag pattern, so I decided to make a wash cloth to match.

This is a small project suitable for four shaft table looms. A central lace panel is bordered by many small stripes and checks (but don’t worry — it’s easy to carry the colours up the side, so there’s not too many colour changes). It’s a very small project that’s quick to weave, and is a great stash-busting project; one colour only requires 40 yds! I used the brown yarn leftover from the Circus Napkins, too.

Thank you for your continued support of my weaving patterns! I get so many nice messages and I really love seeing your projects. Purchase the Rosa Wash Cloth pattern on my website here.

Save Craft Education in Ontario

Craft Ontario is asking for everyone’s help in saving our province’s post-secondary craft programs, which are facing drastic cuts, suspended intake or review. As an educator and craft artist, these programs are deeply important to me and it would be devastating to lose them.

As Craft Ontario points out, the arts and cultural sector in Ontario “contributes $26 billion annually to Ontario’s GDP — that’s 3.3% of the province’s total output — and supports over 270,000 jobs.” One of those jobs is mine! I know that for many people reading this, Ontario colleges and universities will be completely irrelevant, but if you’ve ever bought any of my patterns or work, you’re participating in this sector. This is how I make my living, so it seems critical to share it as widely as I can, so that there’s a future for me and for the next generation of weaving pattern designers and potters and jewellers (among others!).

Several weeks ago our Premier said many of these at-risk programs are “basketweaving courses,” claiming that cuts will free up more investment for STEM and tech programs, the “future” of our economy. Clearly he has never woven a basket before (which I suggest you do with my friend Johnny at Lakeshore Willows this coming summer) nor does he appreciate how baskets, crafts, and hands-on learning ARE the original tech — the kind that developed us as a species. The oldest basket, found in Muraba‘at Cave in 2021 is 10,500 years old, and doesn’t look much different from ones I’ve woven. And, of course, many basketry techniques are similar to weaving; over one, under one, 0 or 1, however you want to say it, these actions lead to the creative leaps that have brought to our computer technology today.

So much of making (whether you are a professional, amateur, or somewhere in between) is about problem solving and creativity, skills that are developed through liberal arts education. The tacit knowledge gained through pursuits like basketry, jewellery, ceramics, furniture making and textiles — some of the program areas at risk — are critical to the tech, automotive, and other economic (read: big money) fields that are supposedly the “future”. The anecdote I shared last month about the aerospace student at Landmade is proof of this — he was fascinated by what wool and weaving could teach him about making panels for airplanes.

Craft Ontario is asking folks who value these programs as much as I do to write your MPP, the leadership of these schools and programs, or to share this with your networks to raise awareness. Read more about this campaign here, where you can also find a form letter to send to college and university leaders, as well as the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. Thank you!

Things to See & Read

• You can see graduating student work from the program I teach in on the Mass Exodus website here! I particularly enjoyed seeing Cali Greenidge’s AFIA collection, which I saw at several stages of production over the academic year. Cali deconstructed kente cloth and rewove it on the loom, using the long trailing ends to create a cape of ribboned pieces.
  

  You can see her collection on the recording of the live show here (at minute 37:12), as well as the other two shows on the same channel. Even though I’ve been teaching at TMU for two years now, fashion still feels like a whole new world and I love seeing what our students make. I’m already looking forward to next year when several of my past students will be graduating!
  

• I’m interested in seeing Cloth; 100 Artists, by Lena Corwin, a recently published book that “spotlights American artists using (and reinventing) heritage techniques. The contributors represent a wide spectrum of age, gender, race, and locale; and their rooted ancestral influences are unique. Each artist, including Lena herself, shares their fascinating perspective and process to create a book that is a colorful, captivating portrait of works made with fiber.”
  

  The publication features artists such as Isa Rodrigues (I love her Piscina work), Zak Foster (his use of text in quilts is really exciting to me. Some of the works in Southern White Amnesia are really striking), and Windy Chien (whose Circuit Board series is cleverly constructed from knots, though at first glance it looks like passementerie!), and several DIY projects.

After June’s newsletter I’ll be taking a bit of break from writing this while I attend an artist residency, but I will be back in September with plenty to share.

Amanda

• Studio views

• House of Wool

• Upcoming workshops

Studio Views

Colour! Texture! Residue from making check paintings in which I was thinking about and through colour and line.

I recently spoke to the Huronia Handweavers Guild (thank you so much for the invite!), and one thing they asked me to speak about was my design process. At first, I didn’t think I had a formal process (or at least the type that could be distilled into an easy equation), but I did have several things to share re: strategies or steps I do take, including the one seen above, drawing.

One thing I shared is that I buy pencil crayons to match yarn — then I can sketch away in close-enough shades and have a more accurate drawing that satisfies my visual mind. One of those drawings has become a pattern that I will publish next month.

Through thinking about design I also ended up thinking about colour, which lead me to examining the colours of cottolin I have in the studio. Judging colour is challenging from a short length hanging next to dozens of other shades, so when I get a new one, I wrap an 1”/2.5cm of this new hue around a small piece of card (a rescued batch of misprinted business cards). I write the company, yarn, and colour number on the top left corner. This gives me a decent area of colour to compare and consider, and because each is separate from the other, I can move them around independently to compare and contrast. I recently pulled them all out to see what my preferences lie: I was not surprised to discover I have never purchased true orange or violet yarn!

I would have liked to have shared a picture or two from last month’s Landmade, but I didn’t take any! Click through the image above to see a few images from the weekend. I had so many great conversations with all sorts of people curious about and interested in local textiles, though I’m sorry for the many flying hellos where I didn’t get to come back.

One memorable conversation was with an engineering student who was curious about wool and its properties because fibrous materials are used in the production of aerospace panelling — this is the kind of connection I was happy to see, wool can be so much more beyond textiles! It was a delight to have my friend Mel from Lickety Spit Fibre Farm demonstrating skirting (cleaning fleeces) in the normally clean and minimal Image Arts building. I walked away without a fleece, but oooo did I want one.

And lastly, I’m very pleased to share that I’ll be heading to Denmark this summer to attend an artist residency. I’m looking for any suggestions, recommendations, and highlights from Copenhagen and beyond (Malmö, Sweden, in particular!). If you are local, let’s meet! Send me an email or leave a comment here to connect.

House of Wool - Closing Sale

My weaving colleague Emily C. Gillies is closing her Halifax-based online shop House of Wool. They stock several excellent materials for weavers as well as spinning fibre and yarn hand-dyed by Emily.

As you can see from this image, House of Wool has beautiful materials for weaving, knitting, and spinning. Everything is 20% off with an additional 10% off spinning fibres. Materials I have used and would highly recommend are Holst Supersoft (which makes wonderful scarves), Venne Eco Jeans, and, of course, Gist Yarn.

Again, I don’t usually like to advertise things on my newsletter, but I also feel like weaving yarn is expensive! And of course it’s also nice to order from and support Canadian small businesses (no duties!) ☺ You can see what Emily has at House of Wool.ca.

Workshops

I’ve got a few workshops planned before I head to Europe this summer. The newest two are in Toronto and Montreal, where I’ll be teaching my Stripe Lab design workshop in May. I’m still working on the Stripe Lab ebook, but in the interim you’re welcome to come and play with stripes through the creative exercises I’ve developed that explore colour, repeating lines, rhythm and scale. Join me at:

• The Textile Studio Coop in Toronto, on Saturday, May 17th from 10am-4pm. Registration is here.

• Irene Textiles in Montréal, Québec, on Saturday May 24th and Sunday May 25th, from 10-4 (each day is a separate class!). Instruction will be in English, but the Irene Textiles folks will be there to help with translation if you are more comfortable in French.
  Registration is here.

There is also still space in my Weave a Scarf workshop at the Art Gallery of Burlington in late April.

• Weave a Scarf, three sessions on Saturday April 26, May 3, and May 10, 1-4pm. Registration is here.

It’s the end of term and I am looking forward to to finishing my marking and unwinding a bit from the pace of the winter semester.

Weaving colleague and all around gem Mackenzie Kelly-Frère is starting a weaving newsletter! It is called The Fell, and will share his own weaving and textile-based research as well as the work of others and, I’m sure, plenty of interesting craft related stories and makers. The first edition is coming in May 2025 and I look forward to reading it.

See you next month,

Amanda

• Seed Pod Towels re-weave

• Darn It! + Landmade 2025

• Upcoming workshops

• Studio Views

Seed Pod Towels

Every so often I receive an email from a weaver with questions about a past project or something I’ve shown on Instagram. Sometimes it’s about personal projects that don’t plan to make into patterns, but others are projects I want to revisit, tinker with, or update, such as the Seed Pod Towels.

I designed the Seed Pod Towels as part of Halftones, my Gist Yarn Weave Quarterly subscription box, which came out in 2023. The original patterns are still available as a bundle on the Gist website, but I wanted to revisit the Seed Pod Towels and adapt them for a slightly closer sett, different yarn, and a slightly rounder seed shape.

If you’ve woven from one of my patterns before, you know I like a good hack — I can’t seem to help myself, I always want to break down my original idea and try out new ways to treadle the same draft. In this new pattern, you’ll find two variations: Towel A resembles the original all-over pattern and is woven in a smooth linen. Towel B places one of the seed motifs in between sections of plain weave, resulting in an undulating chain that travels in horizontal bands. I quite like this new variation — it reminds me of the cell chains that make up plant structures as seen under a microscope.

Since I was already tinkering, I used up the last bit of warp to show you how several different wefts look — this type of floatwork pattern is very amenable to substitutions and swaps, and I’ve included this information in the project in case you’d like to use alternate wefts, too.

The Seed Pod Towels are available on my website as a single pattern download here. Thank you!

Darn It! and Landmade 2025

As mentioned last month, Landmade 2025 is quickly approaching. The website and full list of speakers and workshops is now live, so I’d like to share it here so that you can plan your visit.

I’ll be there as a guest but also as an instructor — I’m running a short workshop called Darn It! where participants will weave a small patch out of local wool, provided by my friends Melinda at Lickety Spit Fibre Farm and Laura at Twin Oaks Fibre Farm.

Darn It! is happening on Saturday March 15, 2025 from 10:30 - 11:30am, at The Image Centre, 33 Gould St, Toronto. Registration is now open: please sign up here!

Upcoming Workshops

I’ll be teaching two more beginner Weave a Scarf workshops at the Art Gallery of Burlington this spring. These classes are geared towards folks who have never woven before but want to see what it’s all about (spoiler: it’s fun!).

Each session is three classes long: you get to borrow a loom from the AGB and I’ll walk you through the process of warping, threading, tying on, and weaving.

There are two sessions available:

Saturday March 29, April 5, and April 12, 2025: Registration here.
Saturday April 26, May 3, and May 10, 2025: Registration here.

Studio Views

Since this newsletter is a coming a little quicker than usual to get those registrations out, there hasn’t been much new in the studio, where I’ve been buried in by the most snow my city has had in 45 years!

However, there has been some nice hand spun yarn — on the left, a naturally dyed stash at my mum’s, on the right, my own.

Using the Design and Technology Lab at the university, I’ve laser cut these small looms for the Darn It! workshop. So far so good!

Amanda

• Studio Views

• Landmade 2025

• Look & listen

Studio Views

The view from my stool, fore and aft.

The wonderful scarves of my first weave-a-scarf rigid heddle class at the Art Gallery of Burlington. More dates are coming shortly — there was a LOT of interest, so please keep your eye on their workshop page if you’re interested.

Montrealers! Save the date - I’ll be coming to teach two sessions of Stripe Lab on May 24 + 25 at Irene Textiles. I’m short on details and sign up links right now, mostly because it takes me ages to reply to Yde’s emails. Coming soon!

Save the Date! Landmade 2025

I’m really excited to share that Landmade is coming back this year! This wonderful event brings together Ontario fibre farmers to celebrate and promote local wool and textiles. Like many things, it disappeared for various factors (pandemic being one of them), and I’m sure I’m not the only person in the Toronto area that has dearly missed it. I met some wonderful people through Landmade and connected with my local fibreshed for several important projects; the wool for my first VÄV Magasinet project, for example, was something I got at Landmade in 2020!

In the past, Landmade was an amazing one day market, where knitters, weavers, spinners, and other supporters could meet farmers and purchase wool and wool products directly from the farm. This year’s Landmade is an expanded 2-day event hosted in partnership with my university, Toronto Met: the market will be on Saturday March 15, 2025, and there will be an all-day symposium the day before on Friday March 14, 2025, exploring and showcasing the many innovative things farmers and makers are doing with fibre. Both days are FREE to attend for anyone interested!

As you might see on the poster, I’m leading a workshop on Saturday called Darn it! Weave-a-Patch, where participants will use a small frame loom to create a woven patch for mending or other projects. Details and registration TBA, but it will be a beginner workshop ideal for anyone who hasn’t woven before or someone who just wants to get a feel for Ontario wool. Let me know by replying to this newsletter or leaving a comment if you’d like to sign up.

I am really excited to see Landmade come back. Local wool is something I feel very strongly about on several levels and I’m thrilled to have it back AND with the symposium component so we can learn from some great folks who have been thinking and making with local wool. I’m really looking forward to saying hi to Deborah Livingston-Lowe of Upper Canada Weaving, Brenda and friends from Black Sheep Farm, and Hamilton local Nọnsó Knits!

Landmade will be held at the Image Centre, at 33 Gould St. Toronto, a short five-minute walk from Dundas Station.

Look & Listen

There’s so many interesting exhibitions that have passed my desk in the last while…

• I’m really looking forward to seeing What We Inherit, a new exhibition at the Worker’s Art and Heritage Centre in Hamilton, ON. Asking “what legacies of labour do we inherit?” artists Natalie Hunter and Heidi McKenzie look at how their own familial occupations have shaped them.
  
  Heidi McKenzie, a ceramicist, traces her ancestor’s journey from Ireland, India, the Caribbean and finally Canada, through her piece Linenopolis — a name many used for Belfast, Ireland, during the nineteenth century. For this exhibition she has created 59 hand-cut, punched, and uniquely decaled jacquard punch cards that express this heritage and the work of her ancestors who farmed flax.

• I won’t be able to see this in person, but I hope some of you might be able to visit Ali Al-Jamri’s The Legend of the Looms at the Blackburn Museum, presented in partnership with the British Textile Biennial and the Arab British Centre. The installation brings together poetry, film, and textiles to bring to life a fictional debate between two weavers. Coincidentally, this is another piece that could be said to explore the legacy of textile work — while unrelated to What We Inherit, both exhibitions seem to be speaking to similar themes.

• Further afield, Pakistan’s first textile museum opened in Karachi in December 2024. Profiled in this Guardian article,

“the museum, named the Haveli, features five galleries showcasing different kinds of embroidery Askari has collected from some of the remotest corners of Pakistan, ranging from ceremonial cloths traditionally sent from a groom to a bride before a wedding, to dowry purses and vibrant animal adornments worn by camels.”

• And lastly, I’m really disappointed that I wasn’t able to see Eva Birhanu’s exhibition Tresses in the Tide at the Textile Museum of Canada. The TMC had to suddenly close their doors last week because of a shortfall in finances and some urgently needed repairs.
  
  Eva’s exhibition “… represents the intersections of Black identity and natural acts of defiance, weaving together the strength of human and ecological survival against all odds,” by looking to coral reefs, which are particularly vulnerable to environmental changes. It’s a real shame the museum had to close and that Eva didn’t have an opportunity to share her work for long.

  
  After I dig out from this snowstorm, I’ll be making a small donation to support the museum, who has supported me by exhibiting my work in 2019 in Crosscurrents: Canada in the Making (sorry, no images available! This link takes you to a school programs brochure, which is still pretty interesting).

  Sorry for all the Instagram links this month!

See you at Landmade!

Amanda

• Studio Views

• A few things to see and share

• Weaving Ergonomics

Studio Views

Hello and happy 2025! I spent the holiday in between terms resting and recovering from a stressful 2024. Apologies, I haven’t written up any more thoughts on Woven Histories as I wished to - I needed rest and time to play in my studio.

That being said, I probably worked more than I should have. I’m happy to share I have a new pattern coming in VÄV Magasinet this spring. This 8 shaft pattern will only be available in their print/web editions, so be sure to renew your subscription and look for it in issue 2/2025.

Like many folks who make things, I rarely make things for myself, so I took a moment to do some material research on a wearable scale. This beautiful mug is by London (ON)-based potter Bev McNaughton and was a gift from one of my dearest friends.

Thoughts about colour continue. This is a study I made for my students at Toronto Metropolitan University. They get an intro to embroidery, crochet, knit, (simple) weaving, and mending over the 12 week term, making samples based on a topic or idea they choose. I’ve been building out the visual research part of the course and modelling how sampling can be informed by drawing, colour research and palette building.

A few things to see and share

There are a few little things I have seen around that I’d like to share.

• My new favourite sewing tool from Kimtsu Studio! If you like to sew, this seam guide and genius multitool made by my friend Leo has been such a great help with recent projects.

  

  Leo is the most skilled sewer I’ve ever met — she thinks about construction from a professional’s vantage and I learn so much every time we talk about sewing. She developed this tool to make small tasks, like measuring and tracing seam allowances, needle placement, and marking corner pivots easier. I’ve reached for it many times while sewing over the holidays!

  
  I try not to espouse buying things in this newsletter (my own patterns being the exception!) but I actually like this tool and naturally I want to support my friend as she is just starting out. Canadians can get free lettermail shipping using this listing; if you are elsewhere in the world (or like a tracked package), please visit the Kimtsu Studio Etsy here.
  

• Brooklyn-based weaver Lisa Ventry has been making some gorgeous Circus Napkins in an alternate colourway, and she has generously allowed me to share the images in my newsletter. I love seeing how weavers tweak my patterns and colours; Lisa’s come up with a wonderful palette and is extending the woven length to make runners. I especially love the yellow one in the gallery below! Visit her Instagram here if you’d like to see more of what Lisa is making.

• The annual DesignTO Festival is on right now in Toronto and there are several weaving-based exhibitions I’d like to see, such as:

  • Charlotte Little’s Weaving the Fibreshed.

  • Jenn Kitagawa’s Understory.

  • Superposition, hand woven sculptures by Shao-Chi Lin.

  • Recycled textiles in Ruth Wickremesooriya’s Winter Waiting.

  • Michèle Guevara’s Water - Unframed.

  The complete festival schedule can be seen here.
  

• I loved this video by MoMA about artist Melissa Cody and her exhibition Webbed Skies in 2024. Weaving + video games!

Weaving Ergonomics

This autumn I collaborated with pal Christine Jablonski on an article for the Gist blog: A Weaver’s Guide to Ergonomics. This is something Christine and I have chatted about for several years — weaving might be many things (work, fun, creative, etc), but repetitive motions, no matter how they originate, can be a real pain (ha ha).

We’re not doctors, so this article cannot replace seeing yours for medical advice regarding aches and pains, but the article details a few of our favourite stretches and strengthening exercises that we hope will get weavers thinking more deeply about their own time at the loom.

Wishing you a limber and loose start to 2025,

amanda

• Studio Views

• New pattern! Circus Napkins

• Woven Histories - a not-to-be-missed exhibition in Ottawa.

Studio Views

November got away from me, so here we are in December already.

I have bought… a knitting machine?? As if I needed another work adjacent hobby…

I have continued exploring colour; a preoccupation for the last several months. My friends always tease me for choosing the same few hues, but I really love colour and I am trying to pay more attention to how, when, where, and why I use it. My colour experimentations will become apparent as you continue to read this newsletter…

Lastly, I have been teaching a few small workshops here and there. A few weeks ago I taught some friends how to weave bands using a simple heddle, and what with one thing leading to another… on February 19, 2025, I will be teaching a one-night workshop on weaving bands at the Art Gallery of Burlington. Join me by signing up here.

I also taught students how to make cordage through the Sustainable Fashion Initiative at my university — it was so much fun to see fashion students imagine how this process might get used in their garments.

And speaking of the AGB - I’ll also be teaching a quick beginner Weave a Scarf course in January/February (Saturday January 25th, February 1st and 8th). This course is only three weeks long — if you’ve never tried weaving but would like to see what it’s all about, this is a great low-risk option (and fun holiday present too!).

Circus Napkins

It’s been a while since I wrote a new pattern! The Circus Napkins are now available to purchase as a PDF on my website. I’ve been trying to work more drawing into my practice and design development; this pattern started as this drawing…

… and morphed into something related-but-different, which I am calling the Circus Napkins because the very bright colours somehow have me thinking of big tops and I have to call it something more compelling than “napkins.”

Full of stripes and contrasty squares and rectangles, this pattern is great for beginners and experienced weavers alike. They’re just a teeeny tiny bit wider than the usual table loom size (17.5” in the reed — sorry!), but make a nice generous napkin once washed and finished. If you need help adapting them for your loom, email me!

There are three treadling variations I’ve included in the pattern — of course, I always encourage folks to invent their own variations using the same basic building blocks using my Tips & Variations section, which also includes suggestions on different colourways as well as how to expand this project to towel width/length.

I realized about halfway through that my Railroad Runner & Napkins pattern also uses a monks belt threading and I worried I was repeating myself… But in the end, I think this just shows the fun and variety you can have by changing elements like colour, material, and size. There’s a reason these simple and classic threadings endure — the well is bottomless when it comes to reinventing and reworking them.

The Circus Napkins are a relatively quick project and would make a nice present. If you’re interested, please click the button below to visit my website and purchase the PDF.

Circus Napkins PDF

Woven Histories; Textiles and Modern Abstraction

At the end of November my mum and I went to Ottawa to see Woven Histories; Textiles and Modern Abstraction at the National Gallery of Canada. Textiles and Modernism both seem to be having a moment in the realm of professional art and this exhibition brings together the… interlacements, shall we say, between practice and movement.

Spanning over 70 years of artistic production, over 130 works explore several key areas of practice and mediums like painting (a sublime tiny Agnes Martin!), sculpture, and drawing. There are works included by the heavy hitters you would expect (Anni Albers, Lenore Tawney, Sheila Hicks), but many were by artists previously unknown to me, or, better still, ones whose work I have longed to see in person, like Igshaan Adams, who I mentioned in this newsletter in June 2024.

… Or this piece, (side by side.coats) by Ann Hamilton, from a work/performance for Contextile in Guimarães, Portugal in which she sourced heritage sheep fleeces from a local farmer before felting them to worn woollen coats. About this project she says,

Just as the work of a weaver and a loom is to hold horizontal and vertical threads in balanced tension, cloth is exchanged as a symbol of a social agreement or bond to maintain or forge social concordance. […] The first exchange was with the animal whose sacrifice became our second skin and our first side by side. 1

There are some great learning resources available from one of the previous stops of this exhibition at the National Gallery of Art’s website. Each museum has shown a slightly different collection of artworks — to my disappointment, Olga de Amaral’s Transparencia azul, 1971, which I’d seen in the catalogue, was not included in the NGC’s mounting, drats!

That’s really a very minor disappointment, though — I have many more favourites photographed that I’ll share in January, but, if you can, I strongly suggest visiting Woven Histories at the National Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario, before March 2, 2025 to see this exhibition. It’s next stop is MOMA in NYC, so mark it in your calendars if Ottawa in the depth of winter doesn’t appeal.

Wishing you a wonderful end to 2024,

Amanda

• Studio Views

• 秋豐，冬眠 Autumn Abundance, Winter Rest

• Forest in the Village

• October

Studio Views

Same desk, different days.

Similar process, different execution. Sometimes I scribble just to distract myself from other projects.

A new exhibition at the AGO - a retrospective of Pacita Abad. I wasn’t sure I understood why everyone kept telling me about her work and speaking about it with such excitement until I walked in and saw these large textile-based works! Photography does nothing for these incredible pieces, and I highly suggest you plan to go and see if if you’re in Toronto. I took these two pictures on a quick visit and I’m really looking forward to going back.

A view from the fourth of five Stripe Lab sessions — it’s been fun to work through the exercises and see what sort of stripes this group sees! In case you want to see some SERIOUS stripes and yarn wraps, check out this video from Margot Selby’s studio.

秋豐，冬眠 Autumn Abundance, Winter Rest

My exhibition with Helen Kong has been on display at Icha Tea this month, closing on November 5th. As always, it’s a great pleasure to continue our conversation about craft, mud, tea, and textiles. Below are some of the pieces I created for this exhibition and some quick shots of the pieces in situ!

Considering the first half of the theme, Autumn Abundance, I wove four tea mats using a palette of naturally dyed colours in thin, delicate cotton and linen. I had in mind crispy brown leaves and the fading black-eyed susans — the abundance of one season’s colour fading into the next. 

Natural dyes create a beautiful warm, vegetal palette that speaks to the browns, golds, orange and rust of autumn. I used flowers such as marigolds, food waste like onion skins, and “weeds” like dandelions to dye the yarn for these mats. As they are used in a tea practice, the colours may shift, fade, or change slightly, another gentle reminder to enjoy autumn’s abundance while it lasts.

For Winter Rest, I created ten tea cloths using a lace weaving technique, thinking of the furrows and drifts of snow that will form in a few short months. There are many types of snow, but I tried to mimic my favourite type with these cloths: thin, slightly transparent, with marks from wind and plants. Just as snow looks white from a distance but contains many colours up close, I used a palette of natural and bleached “white” yarns for the tea cloths.

Forest in the Village

I am eagerly anticipating the opportunity to see my friend Deborah Dewbury’s work in the exhibition Forest in the Village at the Westland Gallery in London, Ontario. Deborah taught me how to weave baskets and her friendship and support is greatly appreciated.

This group exhibition features seven other artists all exploring the theme of trees and will be open from October 29, 2024 - November 23, 2024.

October

My weeks have been packed this month — all of a sudden I realized I hadn’t done more than make cursory notes for this newsletter, when I usually have it sent by now!

Last week I attended the World Hope Forum Portugal - I was particularly keen to hear Rosa Pomar speak about her work with native Portuguese sheep, craft, and culture. Her work is deeply inspiring to me and her yarn is incredible! I used it once on the loom, in the ‘Cushion in Crackle Weave’ pattern published in VÄV Magasinet in 2021, but I live in hope that eventually I will make a sweater in it (there’s a lot of yarn and sweaters in the queue…). You can access the recording of the WHF Portugal here.

I also recently learned of the Toronto-based collective habi habi po, which “is a non-profit collective of Toronto-based Filipino/a/x artists focusing on building community through traditional textile art practices to preserve Philippine cultural heritage
and revive ancestral connections.” I’m very sorry to have missed out on a physical copy of their zine maghabi magkatabi (which I’ve heard is now sold out), but it’s also available to view online at the link above. I love zines and I’m looking forward to seeing what else this collective gets up to! Visit them on IG here.

Wishing you an excellent end to your October,

Amanda

• Studio views

• Homegrown materials

• Things to read etc.

Studio Views

It’s September and the light is beautiful in the studio, and I have so many projects on the go.

A new bench basket I pretty much stole from my friend Green Edna Basketry, and a new piece being finished on the drafting table. Deborah is having an exhibition of her basketry in October in London, ON, details TBA.

Work for my next upcoming two person exhibition at Icha with Secret Tea Time. In the spring Helen and I held the first iteration of this exhibition (which you can read about here), and with the seasons changing, it’s time for part two, Autumn Abundance, Winter Rest.

This exhibition will run from October 5 - November 5, 2024. On Saturday October 6 Helen and I are having a small opening reception with tea from 7-9pm at Icha Tea, 235 Spadina Av, Toronto. More on this project next month!

There are still spaces left in Stripe Lab, my creative workshop happening at the Art Gallery of Burlington in October. More information here and sign-up here. I would love to have you join us!

Homegrown Materials

The most recent issues of the Guild of Canadian Weavers Bulletin arrived a few weeks ago just as the algorithm saw fit to throw several videos about linen, nettle, and homegrown textiles my way. The recent issue of the GCW Bulletin is the first time they’ve done a focal issue on a single topic, which is the revival of interest in linen and homegrown textile production. Many wonderful artists are thinking through and working on this; I find it fascinating, and while I’m not ready to do more than twine things and daydream, in case you’re curious too, here’s a collection of some of the things I’ve seen recently:

• Facts about Flax, BBC Archive. (YouTube)
  From 1951, this short clip shows what flax harvesting was like in the post-war period — the huge wagons full of flax were astounding.

• Wild Fibres, Clothing from Undomesticated Plants in the City, EartHands Gleaners Society. (YouTube)
  Watch Sharon Kallis as she slowly creates a vest and jacket from stinging nettles harvested from Vancouver parks.

• Homegrown/Homespun
  I think I shared this project from Justine Aldersey and collaborators before; in the summer of 2021 they turned unused land in Blackburn, England, into a flax field. They grew flax and woad, eventually weaving and dyeing their own pair of homegrown jeans. The Northwest England Fibreshed has a blog with plenty of information here, as well as the British Textile Biennial link I shared above.

• Prehistoric Nettle Textiles, scraping and splicing, Sally Pointer. (YouTube)
  What I like about this video is that Sally digs deep into preparing and hand splicing nettle (no spinning equipment needed!). She has lots of great videos about weaving and other prehistoric textile practices.

• Kerstin Neumüller’s nettle experiments on IG here.

• Anita Cazzola’s incredible home-grown hand woven linen fabric here!!!

Things to Read Etc.

• I love the images from this exhibition by Meta Struyken, which closed on August 31st in Amsterdam at Eenwerk. Tiny stitched coats explore handwork, repair, and fast fashion. There’s a small English language piece here, and Meta’s Instagram is here.

• Opening next week in Edmonton, Alberta, is Mackenzie Kelly-Frere’s exhibition Drawn, at the Alberta Craft Discovery Gallery. “The exhibition examines cloth as a contextual object, enmeshing ways of thinking and being in the natural world. Kelly-Frère draws on his lived experience of both the Canadian Prairie and a recent artist residency in Blondüós, Iceland to create cloth that reflects situated materialities and our connections to place.” Mackenzie was one of the first contemporary weavers I learned about when I started making and I have always deeply admired his work. If you’re in or travelling to Edmonton from September 21-November 2, 2024, this exhibition is not to be missed!

  

• Anatomy of a White Dwarf: On Life, Home, and Weaving.
  An interview with the artists María Eugenia Dávila and Eduardo Portillo about their work and piece titled White Dwarf, which was included in the exhibition Threaded Visions; Contemporary Weavings from the Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. Another exhibition I dearly wish I could have gone to see! Not only is this textile incredible, but the process and materials they learned about and used to make it takes you around the globe.

• Also highly recommended to watch: this profile of artist Christine Novotny. This time there are still a few weeks left to go see her exhibition at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota, alongside an exhibition of the work of Karin Larsson, Let the Hand be Seen. You can see some of Christine’s beautiful pieces on her IG here.

• The next World Hope Forum is called ANTI_FASHION. This free webinar is hosted in collaboration with New York Textile Month and is held on Zoom as part of their Talking Textiles programme on Saturday, September, 28. It’s always a really interesting presentation, introducing me to many artists I’ve not encountered before, so I highly recommend it. Sign up for free here.
  “Since its creation in 2014, Li Edelkoort's much-talked about ANTI_FASHION Manifesto was the first to raise awareness about the shifts and upheavals experienced in the global garment system. Ten years on, the world has changed as much as the fashion industry itself; often welcoming a more restrained approach that combats fast consumption, spurring a powerful movement towards sustainability, creativity, diversity and uniqueness.
  To celebrate the tenth anniversary of ANTI_FASHION, World Hope Forum is pleased to present a special webinar, sharing stories of people that lead by example — a slow fashion revolution that includes independent brands, folk favourites, outsider artists, artisan makers, textile farmers and style philosophers.”

Wishing you a wonderful start to autumn!

Amanda

• Studio views

• Stripe Lab at the AGB

• Things to Read Etc.

Studio Views

August has been my last month of holiday before the school year begins. I say holiday, but really there’s been a lot happening, just not much that looks great as a photograph (yet).

I wove a scarf for a film! If it gets used I’ll share more about the project, but the mineral blues/earth tones requested was very sympathetic to my go-to palette. I made the biggest mess in the studio; I pulled out everything I have.

A quiet and small piece for the second of my seasonally-themed exhibitions with ceramicist Helen Kong (see Spring Colours from March/April 2024 for the first iteration.) I’ll have more information and the opening dates come September’s newsletter. On the right, some twined dandelion cordage.

A picnic in the willows at my friend Johnny’s farm. He grows willow and teaches basketry — if you are at all interested in learning how to weave with sticks, he’s always offering new classes and workshops across south-eastern Ontario. You can see more of what’s coming up here or find him on Instagram as @thevillagemaker.

Stripe Lab at the Art Gallery of Burlington

I’m excited to share that I’ll be teaching a weaving class this fall at the Art Gallery of Burlington called Stripe Lab.

This five week long class has been developed for weavers who wish to learn more about design, colour, and proportion by exploring and designing their own stripe sequences. It’s less about weaving and more about creative process, curiosity, colour, and developing the skills to make you more confident and creative at the loom.

I think it’s ideal for the beginner weaver who knows the basics but wants to be able to do more than just follow a pattern, as well as learning more about the principles of art and design. We’ll be using rigid heddle looms to test out our ideas in real time, but since this workshop isn’t about skills development, I think (I hope!) that makes it interesting to weavers of all ability and experience.

As a byproduct of teaching art and design at the university level, I’ve been thinking a lot about creative process and my own experience during my BFA. What is creativity and how do we learn to apply colour, shape, form, texture, etc? I’ve realized that much of what I do is fairly disorganized and intuitive — or at least, I can’t tell you why I do something, just that I do it. In an effort to figure out how to articulate elements of this, I’ve been working on Stripe Lab all summer, and not just as this single class.

For those of you who live too far away to attend the workshop, Stripe Lab will be coming out as an eBook sometime this fall — as soon as I put the finishing touches on the text and do all the photography, that is… I’ll of course share more about the project in my newsletter when it’s completed and ready to go, but I hope this is something you’ll find exciting and useful.

Until then — if you’re interested in joining me for Stripe Lab at the AGB, it takes place on Wednesday evenings from October 2-30, 2024, from 6-9pm. There are a limited number of spaces available (only 8!) so if you’re keen, please visit the Art Gallery of Burlington’s website here to reserve yours. Do please send me an email if you have any questions about the class by hitting reply or using my contact page.

Things to Read Etc.

• My friend Cathy sent me a wonderful article from the NY Times about the importance of weaving, place, tradition and land in Hawaii. Titled In Hawaii, Weaving New Life Into a Nearly Vanished Art Form, the article tells the story of moena, traditional woven floor mats made from the pū hala tree. The article speaks with Emma Broderick, the executive director of the Pu’uhonua Society, about maintaining and sharing traditional skills across the islands. The society, which is “active at the intersections of contemporary art, traditional cultural practices, environmental stewardship, and transformational education, [creates] opportunities for Native Hawaiian and Hawaiʻi-based creatives to express themselves and engage with diverse audiences.” What a group!! It was a great article! Alas, it’s hidden behind a paywall, but if you can read it, the link is here.

• An exhibition I wish I could see (that closes August 31st): Thread Count at The Art Station in Saxmundham, Suffolk, England. It’s curated by an artist I like, Freddie Robins, who makes humorous, often irreverent, textile works based in knit and crochet.

  

• To watch: the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s series Immaterial: 5,000 Years of Art, One Material at a Time. I have Blankets and Quilts: Threads of Identity from season 2 in the queue — that link takes you to the YouTube audio (there are limited visuals).

Best wishes from my (still) sunny garden studio,

Amanda