The Art of Landscape Knitting

So, in between a jaunt to London for a work conference, cleaning the house for our six-monthly inspection, and celebrating 18 years with Mr LAWIM, I have been… knitting! I know!!! KNITTING!!!!!

I met Anne Le Brocq through my neighbour two and a half years ago, and we connected over our mutual love of yarn-craft. She is passionate about landscapes and knitting, so it is no surprise that her first book, The Art of Landscape Knitting, is all about patterns that celebrate landscapes.

I have enjoyed following her Instagram profile, seeing where she will take her knitting next and which pattern will be celebrated. A little bit of vicarious living through someone else’s art :) Also, I suppose, through a medium I am not overly confident with.

The beauty of this book, for me, is that it offers SO MANY possibilities. There are 50 different patterns (both in continuous rows and squares – with charts) that can be combined to create a multitude of landscapes. Equally, you can use one of the patterns for an entire blanket or even a garment.

If you don’t feel like using the patterns to tell your own story, there are some ‘blanketscape’ suggestions at the end of the book – continuous rows, squares, colour stripes, single colours, graduated colours… a little something for everyone.

I am not fast or good at knitting. It takes me an hour or two to get my head in the game when I start, and I still have to consult YouTube when I drop a stitch. Even so, I managed just fine. Knits and purls all the way! Well, almost all the way. The Pebbles require working into dropped stitches a few rows down, and I am not quite brave enough to tackle that yet.

To try the patterns, I started off with my Prym 6mm needles (I wrote a blog post about them HERE) and Scheepjes Truly Scrumptious left over from when I made the larger version of ‘I Carry Your Heart‘. I made four swatches: Grass, Bluebells, Pebbly Sand, and Combined Wet Sand.

Not too bad, hey? Although my tension was a bit dodgy at the start of the grass swatch.

One design, in particular, caught my fancy: Troubled Water.

I decided to make a little wall hanging of it (combined with Grass, a spot of Macrame, and a twig from our apple tree). Simple and Happy, and my own personal celebration of the two things here that fill my heart the most: Greenery and Running Water :)

All things going well, I’ll be able to pop around to Anne’s launch party tomorrow (8/11/23) at Wool on the Exe so that I can get a signed copy for a giveaway :)

You can see a quick flick-through of the book HERE on Instagram (as well as details for the launch celebration tomorrow). The book is available to buy on Bookmarkedhub.com HERE.