Oh, Kieran

In my series of favourite designers the turn has come to Kieran Foley. He makes extremely complicated designs, mostly shawls, in lots of vibrant colours, using several intricate techniques such as intarsia, lace knitting and stranding, preferably all at the same time. All the designs make you breathless, both by looking at and by knitting, like the Kurdish shawl and the Oceania pattern. I have made a few of his not so exhaustingly complicated designs. Well, one of them really was quite complicated, the Daisy crescent shawl. A regular crescent shawl, but with flowers knit in intarsia. Using 69 mini skeins.

My first Kieran was less difficult, though, the Shetland crescent. He was inspired by the colour range of Shetland sheep when he designed it. I was at the time equally fascinated by the same in alpaca, so I knit in in my handspun alpaca yarn.

I also made the Echo beach shawl with very interesting ladder patterns. So simple an idea, yet so exquisitely designed.