Making Marls

Making Marls

We are so excited about the launch of the newest book from Cecelia Campochiaro – ‘Making Marls, A Sourcebook for Multistranded Handknitting’. Cecelia is the incredibly talented lady behind the ‘Sequence Knitting’ book that we have at Loop, and love!

Making Marls takes the form of a reference book about multistranded hand knitting, with over thirty ‘recipes’ for different projects. The book is an amazing source book for designers and knitters who want to work with many colours. This huge book has 320 pages and is absolutely packed with colour illustrations and photographs. The book is a real labour of love for Cecelia, she has been working on it for the past two years!

Making Marls’ is a ground-breaking, lushly illustrated, and beautifully made book about multistranded hand knitting and the creation of marled fabrics. 

Making Marls Ostwald on Krysty detail at Loop London
Oswald wrap in Woolfolk yarns

The technique of knitting multiple strands of yarn together is a simple one, and has been used for many years, but with this approach, any knitter can invent a vast number of textured and coloured fabrics. As with her first book, ‘Sequence Knitting’, Cecelia Campochiaro takes a systematic look at a subject that has been hiding in plain sight for centuries.

In ‘Making Marls’, the word “sequence” is used to describe the order of marled stripes, rather than the stitch sequences as in ‘Sequence Knitting’. There are common-strand sequences, bridging sequences, sequences from gradient sets, complex sequences, and even improvisational sequences. Cecelia has very skillfully made all of these techniques very concise and easy to work through. 

Making Marls Castel detail at Loop London
Detail of Castel wrap

A little bit about the author…

Cecelia Campochiaro appeared on the knitting scene in 2015 with her debut book, ‘Sequence Knitting’. Knitting was a casual pastime until she had an ah-ha moment in 2010 and realised that interesting textured fabrics could be created by the simple repetition of a sequence of stitches. This idea evolved and led to her writing ‘Sequence Knitting’, which is a reference book about this mindful approach to knitting.

Making Marls Skou laid out flat at Loop London
Skou shawl

In the years since ‘Sequence Knitting’ debuted, she has continued to develop new ideas in knitting. ‘Sequence Knitting’ is about texture, and her new book, ‘Making Marls’, is about colour. Making marls, the act of working multiple strands together as one, is an old technique, but has rarely been written about as an important technique in hand knitting.

She lives in Silicon Valley, where for many years she developed specialised microscopes used in computer chip manufacturing. Textiles, photography and the arts have been a lifelong passion running in parallel with her technical life. In high school and college even though her main studies were in the sciences, she studied drawing, printmaking, ceramics, and photography. Today she is fully dedicated to the fibre world and “unventing” new ways to make amazing knit fabrics.

Making Marls at Loop

We are very excited to be able to have Cecilia Campochiaro with us on Sunday 19th April from 1:00- 3:00pm at our London shop for a book signing and demonstration of the techniques in her new book! This is going to be a FREE event, no need to book! 

EDIT on 23rd March: In light of the Covid-19 outbreak we have taken the decision to postpone this wonderful event. We hope to reschedule Cecelia and Mary’s visit to Loop for the Autumn. We will of course keep you updated.

Making Marls Detail of Taddeo at Loop London
Taddeo wrap

Mary Pettis-Sarley of Twirl Yarns will also be joining us with some of her stunning, plant-dyed yarn showcased in the book. Mary’s beautiful colours are shown on the book cover! Some of the other beautiful yarns featured in the book include; Woolfolk Luft, Tynd and Sno, Twirl Yarns, Shibui Silk Cloud, Ito Kinu, Sensai and Shio, and Isager Spinni and Alpaca 1.

Mary will be bringing special kits for the event, which will be linked to some of the projects in the book.

Loop and Fundraising

We have just sent £300 from our sales of the ‘Calligraphy’ colour way in Madelinetosh Pashmina to the WWF Australian Wildfire and Nature Recovery Fund. Thank you everyone who placed an order for this colour and helped out! We so appreciate all your help in raising money for this cause.

The WWF have said: “Across the country, over 12 million hectares of Australian land has been burned to the ground. Over 1.25 billion animals have lost their lives so far, including thousands of koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, birds and other iconic wildlife. Your support is urgently needed to care for injured wildlife and restore their homes.” 

We also want to let you know that all profits from sales of the limited edition colour ‘To Australia with Love’ on the Madelinetosh Twist Light base will go to a non-profit charity in Australia helping with the aftermath of the recent fires, called Wildlife Rescue South Coast. It’s a gorgeous colour with lots of shades of blue!

All photographs have been taken from Making Marls, A Sourcebook for Multistranded Knitting

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.