Materials

Linen

Linen is spun from long fibres collected from the flax plant, a tall annual with glossy blue-green leaves and pale blue flowers. Linen yarn has a real body to it, which gives it weight and character and can make it ornery for fine crochet. It tends to fur when rubbed and will rip if you work it tightly over many rounds. Fair enough! Horses push back too, when you’re rough or hasty.

Though horses don’t graze on flax, the grassiness of linen makes me think of good hay – one of the sunniest smells in the world. Horses are often fed flax seeds and oil as a supplement. It turns their summer coats to silk and grows winter fur that’s plush as teddy bears.  

I use linen yarn from two small, family-run businesses:

MAIWA makes a beautiful matte, naturally-dyed linen from Belgian flax, spun in Bengal. Ecobutterfly makes a slightly shinier low-impact dyed yarn. Theirs is certified GOTS Organic, naturally retted and wet spun in Italy from hand harvested North Sea Flax grown in Belgium, France and Holland.

Pakucho Cotton (100 % GOTS Certified)

Pakucho is harvested in Peru from ancient varieties of cotton that grow in a range of microtonal browns, fawns, and sands. The colour you see is the colour that was grown and these plants are perfect for golden horses: the buckskins, cremallos and palaminos. Because it’s un-dyed and un-mercerized, this cotton is unusually creamy to work. The colours are subtle and muted, each with their own weight and quirks of texture. The darker colours come thicker and softly burred while the pale golds are fine and smooth. This inconsistency would be a flaw in other yarns but it’s what I love about Pakucho.

Organic cotton has been cultivated in the Andean region for over 5,000 years. Today, the rising interest in these fibres is helping revitalize small-farming practices threatened by industrialization. The Pakucho cotton I use comes from Ecobutterfly, who source their yarns through a FairTrade certified company called Naturtex. It’s harvested, hand-sorted and spun in Peru without pesticides, herbicides or other agri-chemicals.

Silk

Horses are one of the genuine joys of my life. And also, the cost and class-associations that come with owning a horse really freak me out. What kind of duke do I think I am?  I have similar feelings about working with silk. It’s luscious, inspiring, and infinitely varied – such a pleasure to play with. And, it’s often coloured with high-impact dyes and hardly vegan. It’s a costly material, on a lot of levels. And, damn it, it’s instantly horsey. Nothing I’ve worked with compares to the gloss and aura of this material. It’s special and historied and complicated, like the fibre version of dressage.

 The silk I work with comes from Sanjo Silk, a small, artist-run business in Vancouver that sources silk materials from Europe, Japan and India, alongside their silk-weaving studio. They’re deeply invested silk nerds and it shows in the enthusiasm they have for the material. They raise silkworms in the studio and run a project in Madagascar to support farmers and artisans in creating textiles from indigenous silkworms. Sanjo sells peace silk, wild silk and undyed varieties. I use and love some of those. And I also use the gorgeous other stuff.

I include notes about the specific materials used in every piece, so if the silk bargain doesn’t work for you, there are others to choose from.

Stones

Some prancers are sewn with semi-precious gemstones, like fancy jasper, tigers eye and agate. The connection here is about – the places your horse takes you and the attention you pay to the environment when you’re together. The greens, browns and dusty pinks of the stones remind me of the colours of the conifers, mosses, and sedges I encounter on the trail, but they’re also a little reminder of the scramble. I spend a fair bit of time on the ground, walking my horse up and down trails that are too rocky for him. If I could create anything for you it would be that feeling of traveling side by side with a friend.

Findings

I use a variety of findings, some 925k sterling silver, others gold plated brass; all sold to me as nickel free. I have sensitive ears and if I can’t wear it I won’t offer it. But alloys are tricky, so please contact me if you have specific allergies, as I can special-order findings in your preferred metal.