Category: Textiles

  • Breathing life into an old woollen mill

    Finding uses for buildings that no longer are used can be tricky. Creativity to the rescue! A disused woollen mill in the town of Lobethal, South Australia is now a destination for anyone who works in or is interested in art, especially where textiles are concerned. Featuring spaces for workshops, residencies, studios and retail, the…

  • Knitting in Antarctica

    The poles are places of extraordinary beauty, and apparently that lends itself to knitwear! In a new-to-the-library book called “Knitting in Antarctica”, authors Lynn A Hamann  and Christine M Powell  explore what it means to knit in this wild place through stories and patterns for 28 hats. The book is filled with photographs by Anthony Powell, photographer…

  • This week’s Spotify playlist

    Each week a playlist of audio from Spotify, the streaming platform, is compiled to go along with the blog entries. Every piece has something to do with the blog, although sometimes the connections are not that obvious! To listen, click on the Player above or head over to Spotify and search for “Music to read…

  • Nordic Echoes

    New York’s Scandinavia House is currently playing host to a fascinating exhibition of Nordic traditions in the United States. Emigration from Northern Europe to the Upper Midwest of the States began in earnest in the 19th Century, driven by political instability, lack of food security and the widening gap between rich and poor supported by…

  • Update on the studio

    The studio in Greymouth has been filled-up with the equipment and items from Shetland and now it is being slowly emptied as things go to their new homes. Last weekend the studio was stuffed with loom parts and computers and warping mills and books; all the paraphernalia that goes into weaving. This week the small…

  • Open studio weekend in Greymouth

    This weekend it has been the first Open Studios in Māwhera/ Greymouth. Organised by the Left Bank Art Gallery, the Open Studios has seen visitors travelling around the district to visit artists and craftspeople in their workplaces. Yesterday, Saturday, the textile studio saw forty people through the doors. Many were local but a few were…

  • Winter knits by Jenny Kee

    A new book of fabulous winter knits by the Australian designer, Jenny Kee, has just been added to the library. Jenny Kee started working in the 1960s in Australia before moving over to London where she worked with Vern Lambert at Chelsea Antique Market. Here she developed an interest in vintage and antique clothing, and…

  • 19 Princelet Street

    A house at 19 Princelet Street in East London in England is now a museum but once it was a refuge for immigrants. This charming and poignant animation tells the story of its 300 years of habitation by tailors, lace-makers and weavers.

  • How New Zealand flax changed the world

    New Zealand flax is a tough plant from the lily family. It is completely unrelated to true flax, Linum usitatissimum, from which linen is made, but the plants, unique to Aotearoa New Zealand and, it is said, Norfolk Island, yield tough fibres that resemble linen flax, hence the sobriquet. The NZ plant has an astonishingly…

  • India’s deaf-run lifestyle brand

    There are 18 million deaf people who live in India so Smitri decided to do something about it. Coming from a family where hearing impairment affected her older siblings, Smitri became fluent in sign language and was the youngest news anchor for the deaf community. At the age of 23, she began Atulyakala, a company…