LEVELLING UP YOUR CRAFT WITH SOFT CENTURY DESIGN’S KATHERINE ENTIS
“Suddenly, a whole new world opened up in front of me.”
Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved to make things. It’s a trait that runs strong in the women of myEach Christmas, my grandma would needle hook an ornament for her three children. One year, a perfectly rendered miniature cable car, an homage to the city my mother’s family were from in Japan, another year a candle. My grandma saw my curiosity around how they were made, and she did the seemingly impossible – she taught an active and misbehaved little girl how to sit for hours, patiently learning how to cast on stitches and knit. , knitting scarves for my friends and family, but it wasn’t until I landed in art school to study Textile Design that knitting fully opened up before me. I had loved the colours and textures that I was able to create through knitting, and the skills I learned in college enabled me to dye my own yarns and explore techniques that felt like painting with yarn. – a series of knit panels made on a hand-loom knitting machine using a technique to build up layers of often hand-dyed colour in elaborate landscapes. Suddenly, a whole new world opened up in front of me. I could step away into any world I wanted to imagine. Scenes from favourite books and TV shows took shape on my machine. I began to understand my grandma’s love of crafting a world from yarn. In other words, I was hooked.
