debbie new

...what a day...felicity from s'n'b melbs kindly organised to have coffee with debbie new when she ordered her new book from schoolhouse press, checking to see if debbie might also be coming to oz to promote it. lucky, lucky souls who are going to her workshops while she's here - what's in her weighty tome is a total inspiration. we grilled the woman with questions until she was well browned on both sides - with 8 kids, summers spent on a boat, a knitting career with all these cool projects - there's a lot to cover! we glanced the pages during a quick trip to DEA and decided then and there that we'd make the dress:

it's a beautiful thing. if you want to find out more about debbie, there's a profile and her cards.

one of the interesting things she mentioned was submitting designs to interweave knits for publication - you submit an idea, and if it's approved, they decide the yarn supplier and colour, and get it for you. (debbie knit the dress above for them, only to have them decide that they preferred a top - how would you feel?). submitting to magazines isn't a huge money earner, but it's a useful publicity machine and it's possible to go on from there and use that experience for other things such as teaching, publishing a book, designing for fashion houses etc such as what lily chin has done.

amazing woman, totally chuffed to have met her, and the book is fab - highly recommended you check it out (melbs locals, it's a library book, thanks to her relative that works there, and artisan books will have more (signed?) copies coming in - we sucked 'em dry - they have lots of other hard to find treasures too).