I am a freelance author and designer, specialising in knit and crochet. My passion for colour has been with me throughout my life from the heady days of Biba in the ‘70s to the pared down Scandinavian influences of today.

I love different colours and different strengths of colours for different reasons and so the choice of palette for a project is often the first part of the design process for me. When a yarn company brings out a new colour, I immediately want to start working with it and testing how it behaves with other colours. I am also fascinated by different textures and love to explore how different stitches and yarns can influence a piece.

Prior to designing and writing full-time, I was a primary school teacher and later a tutor in Creative Textiles at my local college. I built this course up from scratch along with the help of my students, and we covered a wide range of techniques including knitting, crochet, felt-making and embroidery. This in turn led me to spending several years working closely with Rowan yarns and building up their workshop programme.

My first book, ‘I Love Crochet’, (co-written with Rachel Henderson) was published in 2007.

I co-authored ‘Exploring Colour in Knitting’ with Emma King, (Collins and Brown August 2011).

My first stitch directory, ‘200 Crochet Stitches’ (Search Press) was published in Sept 2013 and

‘Hello Crochet’, (Pavilion) was published in Sept 2014.

September 2015 will see the publication of ‘150 Favourite Crochet Blocks’ (Search Press).

I am a regular contributor to Knitting, Making and Let’s Knit magazines

I will be working with a range of yarn suppliers in order to bring depth and variety to my work and more choice to you as a knitter or crocheter. My designs will be available in a downloadable format and I will also be producing kits for some of the projects too. On the blog I will talk to you about my inspiration as well as yarn and stitch choices. I’ll also be sharing news about the knitting and crochet world in general.