All About Me

I’m a knitter, sewist, textiles historian and craft skills teacher with twenty years experience working professionally in the field of textile crafts, and about forty years experience of making them. I like investigating objects and am very inquisitive about the stories behind them. I research and write about textiles and haberdashery, and have a particular interest in the inter-war period, patterns for mending, and craft skills education. I can get awfully nerdy when researching textile and pattern techniques of the early 20th century.

I have written articles for PieceWork, Textile History, Take A Break,  Simply Knitting magazine and knitonthenet amongst other publications, some of which is under my former surname: Murnane. I’m also an ambassador for the Knitting Reference Library at Winchester School of Art.

I have an ongoing sock-art project called the Mrs Minivers, which goes on little exhibition tours every now and then and just to clarify, although I knit and exhibit art socks that nobody can wear, I do also design more practical garments and accessories sometimes too. You can see some of my latest patterns by visiting my Ravelry designer page.

After studying Textile Art at Winchester School of Art, I stayed on for an MA in Museums and Galleries, with a specialism on the History of Textiles and Dress from the Textile Conservation Centre, at the University of Southampton.

It was at Winchester that I found my love of working as part of a the bigger picture when we held a group exhibition with work in pairs and threes. This has gone from strength to strength with my collaboration across Twitter, #plateaknit, as part of the online performance group, @platea, amongst other projects.

As well as all of the exciting stuff above, I also enjoy baking cakes, reading 1930s and ’40s novels, giggling at Tim Minchin, hula-hooping, listening to podcasts, spinning my own yarn, sewing clothes and quilts and, of course knitting. Although not always at the same time.

I work, research, write and make things from my home in Hampshire, in the south of England where I live with my lovely photographer husband, Giles, our daughter and cat, Penfold.