Interview with Sarah Aka Silly Hands- A knitter and crocheter


I chatted on the phone to Sarah who runs the instagram account and youtube channel, Silly Hands. She grew up in switzerland in the italian speaking part, in Lugano and she has now been studying History Of Art and fine art at Goldsmiths university.

Her knitting and crocheting work ties in nicely with what she’s been doing at university as a lot of her work includes textiles. She finds that both her fine art practice and her knitting work on the side influence each other and work in harmony. She began crocheting in 2021 when her boyfriend who knew she was really interested in it gifted her a crocheting kit. She originally learned everything from youtube and online research. Once she’d gotten the hang of a few stitches she then started to create her own designs, ‘As soon as you know the basics you can start making your own designs, which is very cool’. 

When it comes to knitting that started a bit later for Sarah, about a year and half ago. She says that with both knitting and crocheting it’s all about learning a few basic stitches, and how to increase and decrease. Once this is learned you can start to create shapes and sizes that fit to your desired outcome. 

‘I’m inspired a lot by the knitting and crocheting community, other people’s work is very inspiring’. She takes a lot of inspiration from people she has found online, one being loopy studios. She has also made a lot of friends this way and has even met up with other knitting and crocheting creatives.

 

Her ideas often come all at once and even just looking at colors and textures in yarn in the shops gives her lots of inspiration. She will always look for yarn stores when she travels as she loves to buy local products wherever she is and find things that you wouldn’t get anywhere else. She will also sometimes order online from warehouses which have lots of different brands and means that she can find the specific type of yarn she has in mind for a project or design. There is a place called loop knitting in london which she loves to visit, mainly just to look around!

She creates clothing but also incorporates knitting and crocheting into her fine art practice, she is inspired by shape and form. For her fine art she uses unspun wool although when it comes to create clothes you have to use spinned thread. She has previously done some installations which include knitted and crocheted pieces. She is working on a very interesting project which basically uses her arms as the knitting needles. 

Sarah’s aim in the future is to continue to work on her patterns and release more that she can sell. She is currently testing some patterns which if all goes well will be ready to buy soon. One thing that is important is that the design can be manipulated to fit different body parts and look great on anyone regardless of gender or size. One thing that has been the most rewarding for Sarah is to see other people creating and wearing her designs.

 

She is working on creating a website where she can sell some of the pieces she has made and she has also started a youtube channel which includes her knitting diaries where you can see the process behind knitting and crocheting. 

You can head over to her instagram and youtube channel to discover everything she is up to!


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