We Interrupt Slow Fashion October to Bring You A New Pattern Site!

I am so excited to finally be able to announce a project that has been in the works for several months - a brand spanking new pattern site!!!!! And - get this - it originates from the southern hemisphere, in South Africa no less!

The brainchild of Yurika Kotze (a designer publishing patterns under the Fiber Quest name), she put out a call in early summer on Ravelry to designers to gauge interest in a potentially new curated pattern site. Enough of us (myself included) said yes, and here we are at today's Swatch Warriors site launch.

This is a deeply curated collection - and therefore something very different from Ravelry, which is first, and foremost, an all-inclusive database. Swatch Warriors sets itself apart with Yurika's curation - she has taken her designer's eye and aesthetic sensibility and applied it to each designer's collection, teasing out what she finds to be new and fresh in crochet (her fiber medium of choice) as well as knit. So, for instance, I have several of my cowls listed on the site, but by no means all of them, and this is by design. In the site's own words, it aims to be ". . . a niche go-to site for all the best contemporary designs. Modern and beautiful, the site boasts designs by forward-thinking pioneers in the fiber arts." Ahem, thank you for the compliment, Yurika!

Swatch Warriors is very easy to navigate: it is sorted by tools used (needles or hooks) and then by categories. On the home page you will find a spotlight pattern of the week (which, of course, I do hope a few of mine will make it there!), and all patterns are available for immediate download upon purchase. The site's curation is ongoing, so look for new patterns to hit each week, and, since I have a new autumn collection rolling out, like, in mere minutes (!), hopefully more of my designs will make their way onto the site. 

Most importantly (at least for me), I am thrilled that a traditionally underserved area of our fiber community is finally getting a well-deserved spotlight. South Africa is a place close to my heart, not only because I lived there for a summer during graduate school, but because most of the world's mohair (one of my favorite fibers) is produced there. It has a rich culture of fiber (and many other) arts, so I look forward to Swatch Warriors potentially filling this fiber arts' gap. I hope everyone will visit the site and view designs from a new perspective and (hopefully) a fresh eye.

One of my favorite photos snapped in South Africa of the awesome
Table Mountain on an early August day.