Design notes from Niela
Saand is a lightweight knit in a gentle texture, which lets the colour of our extra-fine merino yarn sing.
I was keen to make a fabric where the stitch pattern went right to the edge, without any kind of edging or border (many knitted fabrics will curl at the edges without a different stitch or border at the edge). The combination of knit and purl stitches in moss stitch gives exactly what I was looking for.
You can see why this stitch pattern is sometimes known as seed stitch, but to my eye it’s more like a gritty grain of sand—just like you find on the beach here at Hoswick. And like sand, light seemed to be reflected: the colours of the yarn were so different to the same yarn knitted up in a smoother stitch.
Sand on the beach at Hoswick, Shetland
The origin of this collection is more straightforward than some of my other work, but sometimes the technical aspect of a textile (in this case the stitch pattern) will speak clearly about what it wants to be. I knew, when looking at the first swatches, that an airy garment would follow.
With some little details and shaping here and there, the Saand holiday jumper is an elegant and useful knit.
