Welcome to my third Mirasol Book!

After the first season of the Mirasol Project last year it was overwhelming to see the response to the Mirasol Project from knitters and I was so excited to see how far the building had progressed. I never thought that by the third book I would be seeing photographs of a finished building. It is unbelievable! It is also great that we can see the difference we are all making, just by doing a something we love.

I feel knitting is a very social activity (either visiting your local yarn store or through the internet community), as we can share all our garments and we will always learn something new from another knitter, and through the Mirasol Project it does feel, like we are all knitting together.

Mirasol to me is about family and traditional crafts that will hopefully be passed down through future generations. With this in mind I thought about the best location for this book, and to me Yorkshire in the UK has personal family history as well as a history that involved the woollen industry. In Victorian times a textile mill local to the area we photograph in used to spin with alpaca and created a self contained living space for the workers of the mill.

Nowadays the local industry has changed considerably and most of these areas would be developed and change beyond all recognition if it wasn’t for the National Trust who maintain buildings and areas of outstanding natural beauty for everyone to enjoy, like the ones we photographed in.

The inspiration for my designs included the colourful yarns introduced this season, Qina and Tupa. Some of the designs use a technique that slips the stitches to create a finished effect that looks like fairisle or intarsia but actually does not involve any of the complicated techniques associated with colourwork. As always I try to create simple and easy to follow knitting patterns that create a unique garment using a truly unique yarn.