I have been a knitter ever since I started making sweaters for my children. I have always felt that clothes should be light weight and comfortable to wear, and those qualities are especially important for children’s clothes. My taste is also towards simple designs that don’t use highly dominant colours, resulting in clothes that blend well with their surroundings rather than clamouring for attention.

As my children grew older, I began to improve my knitting skills, taking many short courses, and I slowly realised that I had to look beyond ‘technique’ for its own sake to find what was important for me. It’s only relatively recently that I’ve realised how many fences I’d erected as a result of my attitude towards making clothes. I placed so much obstinate stress on functionality and my own strict requirements that I never stopped to ask myself why I felt it they were so important or to question where my ideas came from.

So now I need to find a force that will help me start to break down those fences, and I’ve begun with the colour red. I chose ‘red’ for its raw energy. I’m building shapes from simple red squares. It’s a process that I feel indicates something about my recent shift, but I hope that it’s also a pathway to discovering new facets of myself.

Who knows, this could be my turning point.