Paris Part 2

This post continues my report of our trip to Paris yarn shops. For part 1, see here.

After our trip to La Drogerie, we stopped off for a quick drink and a sit down. I had a small glass of dry Reisling (very nice), for the sole reasoning that it was cheaper than water (just let that sink in!). Alice and Yuvee were a bit more adventurous!

Scrum-diddly-umptious!

We then sauntered over the the third yarn shop of the day, Le Bon Marché. Unlike the other shops on our tour, Le Bon Marché is a department store, and a rather posh one at that (their window display had Rick Owens, 3.1 Philip Lim & Hussein Chalayan), but up on the 4th floor is a large yarn and haberdashery department.

The store is otherwise fairly modern, but this department is all wood panelling & old fashioned service (yes, another queue-request-wait-pay scenario). I picked up this skein of wonder-fun.

Combed merino plied with a fine thread. It is very very lightweight, but so huge. Here it is with 100g of sock yarn for comparison:

The brand is Bouton D'Or and the yarn is Mistral.

After Le Bon Marché we made our way to our final stop, L'Oisive Thé. Recently this shop has begun stocking Alice's Sokkusu range of yarn, and we wanted to check it out!

(Love the monkey by the door!)

We quickly found Alice's yarn in this fab little yarn & tea shop.

I wish we had a shop like this in London, being able to sit with tea and browse the yarn was lovely, as was taking the time to really consider my purchases!

The store owner, Amy, joined us for tea and chat, and we got a good look at her yarn.

She mainly stocks US brands, with a couple of Canadian lines. With the Sokkusu range she's branching into UK yarns, and it seems as though it's been a great success! I ended up going home with 3 skeins I simply can't get in London yarn shops.

This Sweet Georgia Silk Crush Sock in Tumbled Stone is just dying to become a shawl.

I have mitten plans for this Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport in Seaside

And I'm not totally decided yet on this Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Patina (which, if you check out Alice's blog, you'll notice is exactly the same colour as the jumper I was wearing on the day!)

After tea and shopping we settled down to the L'Oisive Thé Knit Night. We met some awesome people looking forward to visiting London for Knit Nation, and I was surprised and impressed by how happy people were to speak English with me (I have completely forgotton my AS level French, much to my embarrassment!)

 It was great to see the range of people's project, and Alice was very excited to see her yarn being knit up by eager knitters!


After Knit Night it was time to rush back to the station, grab some ice cream and head back to London. We had a quick and easy journey, then I had a brief tube trip home, where I fell pretty much straight into bed!

What a day! I can't wait to do it all again!

Paris Part 1

On Wednesday, I was fortunate enough to spend the day in Paris with my friends Alice (aka Socktopus) and  Yuvee. Taking advantage of speedy and affordable Eurostar tickets we were able to go there and back in a day, which was fantastic (and a great way to save on hotel costs!)

That being said, in order to make the most of the day, we arrived at St. Pancras at the ungodly hour of 5.50am in time for our train at 6.50am. But by the time we were on the train, and full of caffeine, we were in good spirits!

Upon arrival we swiftly made our way down to the metro (and I mean swiftly - the Eurostar is SO much easier than flying!), and off towards the Bastille. We stopped off for a Parisien Breakfast of toast, croissants, OJ & coffee:

 

I wasn't hungry and opted for a simple apple juice instead. What arrived was this monster, which I was very grateful for, until I realised it was going to cost me 7.50 Euros! (£6.55/$10.70!) But what could I do? No holiday is complete without some tourist mishaps!

After breakfast we walked a short distance to the first yarn shop on our tour, Entree des Fournisseurs.

This lovely little place is situated just off a fairly busy street in an idyllic ivy covered courtyard. It sells a wide range of buttons, ribbons and some lovely quilting fabrics, as well as a small range of yarn from well known French brands (and Debbie Bliss). As I was quick to learn, yarn shopping in France is a different experience than in the UK. Yarn is kept behind the counter and you must queue to request it from one of the sales assistants. Similarly, buttons are displayed on sheets around the store, and you must queue to get an assistant to help you. The process is slow and inefficient, but must dramatically reduce shoplifting losses, and is rather quaint! 

We wandered for a while longer, spotting a number of engravings like this one;

"Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood", the French motto and, I believe, reasoning behind the colours of the French flag.

Alice lived in Paris as a teenager, and had visited regularly since, so she took us to the Jewish quarter for falafel for lunch. This was my falafel:

It was probably twice as large as it looks in this picture. And it was absolutely delicious. Don't believe me? Look at the queue!

After falafel, we made our way over to La Drogerie, probably the most well known of Paris' yarn shops. With stores throughout France and several in Japan, the store has an unusual business model. Rather than selling yarn from wholesalers, they have their own line that you can purchase in unlabelled 50g cakes (so remember what you buy!) Like Entree des Fournisseurs there is a complex queue-request-wait-pay system, but you do get to fondle samples of all the yarns before choosing what you want. 

It's a pretty shop;

And I picked up 50g of a lovely Merino/Silk blend I'll keep for a mini-project or swatching. I was surprised to find I had absolutely no red yarn in my stash, and am happy to have rectified this!

After La Drogerie our tour continued, but I'll leave that until tomorrow!

Natural History Museum at Tring

Note: This post contains photos of taxidermied animals. They're cute and amusing, but I feel I should warn you just in case.

For those of you that know me in real life, the thought that I was excited by a visit to the Natural History Museum's Tring Museum will come as no surprise - the main event in London being one of my favourite places in the world. Indeed, such a fan of the NHM am I, that I must have been 20 times since moving to London 2 years ago, including on my birthday. I was even lucky enough to do my main Masters research in association with the museum (and London Zoo, because I am a lucky girl!)

The Tring Museum houses the collections of Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, one of the greatest collectors in British History. Throughout the latter part of the 19th Century Lord Rothschild collected (figures from the NHM's website here) :

• 2000 Mounted Mammals
• 2000 Mounted Birds
• 2 million butterflies and moths
• 300,000 bird skins
• 200,000 birds eggs

and

• 144 giant tortoises

As you do.

I had never been to Tring before, but the zoologist in me was very keen, and when Andrew's Mam suggested we made an Easter weekend trip I couldn't wait! The museum is very easy to get to from London, only 30 minutes on the train and then a short bus or taxi ride away.

Upon arrival, the first main gallery houses the taxidermified birds, cats, bears and primates, including a polar bear and at least a dozen great apes, in a variety of poses. All of the exhibits in the museum are original specimens from Lord Rothschild's collection, and as such are at least 100 years old. Therefore, these specimens provide a unique snapshot of a time when hunting such magnificent creatures for sport was not an uncommon activity for the wealthy.

I was very inspired by some of the beautiful patterning on many of the birds, and I can't help but feel there's some knitwear dying to leap out in response to these beautiful shapes and colours:


This is an Ocelated Turkey from Central America, those greens and golds are just wonderful (definitely a silk knit!)


This is a Lady Amhearst's Pheasant from Southwest China - such a fantastic collar!


I can't remember what these guys are, but aren't they lovely! I must remember that not everyone loves brown as much as I do, but still, look!

There were a few other excitements, most notably (and I was massively massively excited about this), the posession and display of the museum of a Thylacine, or Tasmanian Wolf, an animal that has been extinct since 1932. And in the most wonderful condition;


Perhaps unsurprisingly, the museum also contained it's fair share of hilarious taxidermy, with which I leave you. I hope if I'm ever preserved for history I get to amuse as many people as these guys.

Sweet Clement Vest

I feel I probably owe some sort of explanation as to my terrible blogging since the show back in March (blimey, so long ago!) - I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, but have been busy with a few things that don't make interesting blogging (or that I can't be blogging about at all!)

I spent a couple of weeks knitting a couple of pair of socks to be used as the samples in a new book by Socktopus out later this year. This gave me a good chance to get to grips with her new range of yarns, Sokkusu. I was able to use the original blend, Sokkusu-O, a merino nylon loveliness, with high twish plies and lots of stretch and squishiness, and the rather posh Sokkusu-X, containing cashmere for the other pair (this stuff is simply awesome!). I've also been finishing up the pattern for the "cardicape" last seen at the show, which is currently being tech edited and test knitted (thanks Mam!). We did a wonderful photoshoot of the whole collection, which I will be sharing with you in dribs and drabs as the 6 patterns are released.

But I have also been knitting away at a new design I'm doing with Sweet Clement Yarns, in preparation for exclusive release at this summer's Knit Nation. I'm so excited about Knit Nation I am now dreaming about it!

Sweet Clement are one of my new favourite yarn brands, run by Pippa, they are a gorgeous range of semi-solid yarns in bright, powerful colours. I used her Smitten yarn in the Leaf Litter collection, making what turned out to be my favourite pair of socks, women's size Brick by Brick (another pattern in progress) in Mahogany. For this new garment design I am using Beloved, a 100% superwash BFL 3 ply in the cobalt colourway. It's not complete just yet, needing an edging on the armholes, seaming, a touch of grafting and the addition of some rock and roll zips, but here's a sneak peak!


As you can see, our dress form has more than passed it's best. According to Andrew, the brand is very good and expensive and we are lucky to have it. It is vintage (can't you tell), but this also means the measurements are vintage, and really it's a couple of sizes too big for this garment (as you can see from the very stretched ribbing and the rather exposed chest in the top picture!) All of this aside, you can really see the colour of Pippa's yarn, and the subtle mottled effect of it's semi-solid nature.

I was very inspired by a recent trip Pippa, myself and Rock & Purl's Ruth took to the Yohji Yamamoto exhibit currently at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington. Looking at the unusual shapes of his woven garments was very cool, and at least two of those looks have inspired features of this garment. The first was a huge black winter coat, with unusual fastenings on the hip and shoulder at the back of the garment, and considering my great love of back details, I couldn't pass up this opportunity. As such, the garment fastenings, at the waist/hip and a pseudo fastening at the shoulder are on the back.



I was also intrigued by a garment that posessed multiple layers of fabric (a trademark of Japanese fashion), framing an armhole. These delicate layers of crepe have been replaced in this garment by a yet to be attached rib section, adding stabillity to the narrow shoulder straps.

The garment is made in one piece, another common feature amongst minimalist designers, knit flat from the bottom up. As such it has a rather scary cast on count, but decreases rapidly to more managable numbers.

The waist-hip region consists of twisted rib intersected by mini-cables made without a cable needle.


This feature (shown here at stretch) was inspired by the nature of the yarn, which just was crying out for a simple texture pattern to make it "ping".

The rib carries up the fronts of the wrap vest, and forms pseudo-side seams, splitting at the base of the armhole to form a frame.



The garment will be released exclusively at Knit Nation, and then will be published online around 1 week later. I am hoping to do a photoshoot sometime this week once the sample is complete, and will be publishing those pics here in advance of the sale.

The Big Day!

Apologies to all who are thoroughly Royal Weddinged out by now if my enthusiasm is annoying - here in my part of London we're still riding the high!

I'm happy to say that one of the big perks of living in this noisy, smelly city is the opportunity to get involved in big events like the Royal Wedding, to "be part of history" and make "memories for the grandchildren". It's silly and a bit of fun, a great free day out, and perhaps more importantly, and excuse to be involved in a bit of good news for once.

My mam came down from Newcastle to come and celebrate with me on Thursday night, we spent a wonderful evening at Knit Night at Loop in Angel Islington, and prepared for our early morning yesterday.

We got up at 7, had tea and breakfast and arrived at Westminster tube about 8.15. We were worried this would be very late (you must have seen people camping out for days!), but it turned out to be pretty much perfect. The area outside the station was crazy, it's right by Big Ben, and pretty cramped in by the main Royal route. The police were doing some rather efficient (it turned out) crowd control, but we were crammed elbow to ear for about 15 minutes. Eventually we made it around the corner of Parliament Square onto Whitehall, the main thoroughfare of British politics. We wandered down about 100m until we were very close to the Cenotaph, the UK's most revered war memorial, and very close to Downing Street. We found a spot behind some short old ladies and a family with young children, which was fantastic as we could see very well over their heads. Shortly after we arrived (we did have time to get a cup of tea) the cars started coming by carrying various esteemed guests, and we had great fun watching the marching bands and handsome police officers too!

We were fortunate to have found a copy of The Mirror on the tube, so had a list of who to expect when. So we knew well in advance to expect these two handsome chaps;

The picture's a bit fuzzy there, but the crowds went wild at seeing William and Harry on their way. I'm afraid I don't have any pictures of Kate or the bridesmaids, I was too excited to be fussing with the camera!

During the service we were able to listen in as loudspeakers relayed everything. The whole crowd sang along to Jerusalem (except me, somehow I've never learnt the words), and the national anthem was sung with such enthusiasm that the police horses were spooked! During the service there were an assortment of people going down the route to keep us entertained;

and we had a chance to get a good look at the servicemen lining the route, including their fantastic shoes.

Due to the power of twitter I was able to show everyone around me the dress, and keep up with all the press releases, which was fantastic.

As we heard the couple leaving the ceremony the tension rose even higher;

Until eventually we got so see the happy couple!

This picture was taken at quite a distance, again, I wanted to enjoy the moment, but I think you get a pretty good view! I also got a photo of Charles & Camilla in their carriage:

Which is pretty beautiful don't you think? I could absolutely have a set of footmen.

After the procession we made our way towards Buckingham Palace to see the kiss on the balcony. I don't know if you saw any footage of the Mall at this point on the TV, but it was insane.

We were crammed elbow to ear, and I saw very little, but I did glimpse the happy couple, Camilla (did you see her hat, you couldn't miss her) and the Middletons. The crowds were heaving, old people were being sick in the heat, there were anxiety attacks, and the police were very stressed. I heard somewhere there may have been a million people there, which would explain some of it!

We ended up walking to Victoria to get the tube home, and were able to avoid the worst of the crowds on the transport which was good. We arrived back in East London to find a street party in full flow in the nearby estate and treated ourselves to a Mr. Whippy ice cream. We had been on our feet for 6 hours by this point, and once we got home simply collapsed! My poor Mam had to make the long train journey home to Newcastle while I had a nap, rose briefly and then went to bed at 9.30.

I feel very lucky that I was able to go and enjoy the day, and very happy to see the wide range of ages and nationalities of people who turned out to show their support. I understand the frustrations of those people less enthusiastic than I am, but regardless of your opinon of the monarchy, a young couple who love each other got married and that's lovely. Did you see William's face on the balcony? I can't believe anyone wouldn't be warmed by that.

MODO 2011 Video

Today I received the wonderful news that my ever fantastic photographer/videoman Rajee had uploaded the video of my show onto Vimeo. And here it is!


Leaf Litter by Michaela Moores from ra jee on Vimeo.

I hope you enjoy it!

Photoshoot!

Yesterday was the official collection photoshoot, and what a day it was! Myself, two photographers and 7 models travelled out to Hampstead Heath in the spring sunshine to get some shots. But wait Michaela, I thought there were 8 looks in your collection? Well yes, dear reader, but due to model shortages I ended up modeling a bit myself! Ooo err!

The photos will be released over the next few weeks as there are gazillions of them, and many will be used for the pattern releases of the socks and garments I've designed. However, I had to share with you some of my favourite "photoshoot in progress" shots. All photos are by the wonderful Rajee Sukumaran.

From left to right: Holly in Inside Leaves version 1; Me in Twinkle Twinkle Little Socks by Aimee Skeers; Urvi in spats; Sofia in Brick by Bricks (small size); Georgia in Reversing Leaves by Cat Bordhi; Wilf in Brick by Bricks (Large Size) 

Models & socks as above. I love this shot!

From left to right: Me, Urvi (carried by Tori), Holly, Sofia, Georgia, Wilf (just seen). We were walking in our socks on the Leaf Litter, and Urvi was barefoot except for the spats, hence the piggyback!

Danmi Lee photographing Tori by the lakeside. This lake was great, we even saw herons!

Tori in the spiny snood and the Autumn wristies.

We found this brilliant branch to hang the collection while we were changing (hence the single sock). Of course it's only now I realise quite how short the short shorts are!

We had the most fantastic luck with the light yesterday, it was brilliantly sunny when we were photgraphing the clothes, but as soon as they went on the models the clouds came over, removing the glare and giving more even coverage.

It was a really fun shoot and I'm really really excited about how the photos came out. Again, we used models who are UCL students, and our photographers were both University of London students as well. I'm very grateful to the whole team for helping me out, and we're planning a short film shoot for later in the year, so keep your eyes peeled!

MODO Show part 3

Thanks for all the support for my work from the previous two posts - I'm waiting on a full video of the whole collection that I will share with you as soon as it's ready (very excited about this, especially as I didn't really get to see my collection!)

But for now, I want to share with you some of my favourite bits from the rest of the show! We'll begin with this brilliant video by James Ho, "The Day", a collection of short shots summing up the chaos that was the Friday show day. I don't think I'm in this one, Friday was pretty chaotic for me, but some of my clothes definitely are! I've set it to play the non-HD version, but those of you with faster connections than me can watch it in HD!


the day from James Ho on Vimeo.

James was kind enough to make us two other videos for our show, entitled "The Beginning" and "The Prep" - I am in both of these videos, I'm the short haired brunette in the shapeless lace jumper or the green dress.

In addition to James' videos, I am also keen to direct you over to ScientistChic, a style blog by UCL PhD student Lizzy Harley, in which she dedicates three lovely posts to reviewing our show. See here for her review of my collection, and here and here for reviews of other people's.


As I've said before, the UCLU MODO Fashion Society Show, which I directed (as much as one can direct a fashion show) and within which I presented an 8 piece knitwear collection, was a collective experience presenting 28 mini-collections by 26 amateur fashion designers using 35 amateur models. Everyone involved is currently a student at University College London and as such has volunteered their time and skills to the collective. Bearing in mind that nobody is a professionally trained designer, some of these creations are outstanding.

For starters, these amazing silk painted pieces by Naomi Russell, painted by hand over many weeks to create the butterfly effects shown (excuse the back shot, this photo by Rosie Willatt shows off the detail to maximum effect).

This jumper, knitted by Rhi Graves, was one of my favourite looks. Partly because I always appreciate a nicely executed piece of handknitting (the grafting at the underarms is excellent), and also because I love the attention to detail in the styling here.The model had a pencil skirt of Rhi's creation, simple black court shoes and this perfectly fitting hair. Love it! (Photo by Josh Blacker)

I probably don't need to explain why this look by Aminat Omotosho is fantastic. (Photo by Josh Blacker).

This circus themed collection by Tori Jordan was particularly good fun! (Photo by Josh Blacker)

As was this collection by Kirsten Shastri (Photo by Josh Blacker).

One of my favourite looks of the night was this conceptual design by Marta Owczarek, inspired by the Barbican's recent Japanese Fashion exhibition.(Photo by George Lampadariou)

Another example of the importance of viewing a fashion show as an event, not just an excuse to show off some clothes, came with Anna Dzieciol's fetish inspired collection. Using latex "fabric" and glue, combined with excellent styling, models, music and stage direction, she produced one of the most talked about collections of the night. (Photo by George Lampadariou)

Closing the show was Jackie Ng's Miliatary Romance collection, nine gorgeous dresses inspired by the Army, Navy & Air Force, my favourite of which was this beautiful Naval inspired ball gown. (Photo by Josh Blacker)

I hope that this has at least a little bit inspired you to go out and do something creative - you don't need an art and design background to produce beautiful things. I'll keep you posted over the next few weeks and months with the goings on at UCLU MODO Fashion Society, and who knows, maybe you'll join us at next year's event!