The joy of knitting with Julia Wilkens
Julia Wilkens knitting at a beach.
Before I sat down to interview Julia Wilkens, I didn’t know how much we would have in common. I knew her from afar (through Instagram that is), that she is German and lives in the Netherlands. As a knitting pattern designer, I have featured her Kumo sweater on the Fancy a stripe round-up. But as so often the case when you find your people, you link up because of the hobby, but you connect on so much else, too. This was the case for Julia and me.
Supportive community
If there is one red thread in the way Julia talks about her passion for knitting, it is the community. She refers to the knitting community surrounding wool shops in the Netherlands as ‘knitting hubs’, even having worked at Stephen & Penelope in Amsterdam herself for a while. She created her own community of fellow pattern designers once she got into publishing patterns. And she regularly calls upon the community of her test knitters.
The support and inspiration she garners through the interactions with like-minded people is, I feel, crucial for her art and work. The knitting community is supportive of each other and appreciates the time and skill it takes to produce a handknit. “We support each other in how seriously we take it” she adds.
Knitting shops - or hubs as Julia calls them - in the Netherlands
Stephen & Penelope (Amsterdam)
Rebel with a Twist (Dordrecht)
Cross & Woods (The Hague)
Once Julia started designing and publishing her own patterns, she connected with fellow designers Soraya Garcia (Yedraknits on Instagram) and Maaike van Geijn (Breielaar on Instagram), who are also both based in the Netherlands. Through online meetings, they encourage each other just by chatting about common challenges like magazine deadlines, organizing test knits or balancing a day job with a knitting side business.
Knitting bug
But of course, the love for knitting goes beyond the community. Julia tells me: “We can count ourselves really lucky that we have caught the knitting bug,” and I agree. “Because I can have a very busy day but knowing that in the evening, I can knit already brings me such relaxation.” She recommends a recent Fruity Knitting video podcast, which includes an interview with Dr. Anne Kirketerp on craft psychology. The often-cited state of ‘flow’ while knitting can be a nice side effect of knitting, but the pure anticipation of a knitting session later gives Julia joy and happiness to continue with her day.
Design approach
Julia learned to knit from her mother, who always was creative. It brings back memories of family hangouts and vacations on her mother’s family farm. “From the beginning, for me, knitting was figuring things out and experimenting.” It sparked her fascination with knitting, which continues to this day. “People talk about sleeve island. I have body island already!”, so she needs a bit of excitement in the pattern she makes or designs. But ultimately, for Julia:
“Knitting is enjoyable and that in itself is the most important thing. It is just joyful to knit.”
Likewise, when it comes to Julia’s design approach, she focuses on the process and experience while knitting rather than the product at the end. She often starts with a special stitch or texture that sparked her interest, before testing it with different yarns and then colours. Only after that would she decide what it will turn into: “Will this be a sweater, a detail on a sweater, will this be shawl, a whole surface or will it just be the edge?”
Julia’s very first design was a cowl called Three Dee.
Her latest pattern is the Ziggy shawl, recently published in Laine Magazine. © Laine Publishing
From functional to abstract
Over the past five years, that Julia has been designing patterns, she created many sweaters at first but is now moving more towards shawls. “The nice thing about shawls is that it is a blank canvas on which you can play much easier than on a sweater. In the beginning I was more functional with my patterns but now they are really more abstract.” She is taking the liberty to be artistic, because why not? I always think we need to follow our hearts (and knitting hands) more. And Julia says: “I am giving myself much more freedom to just go where my knitting wants to take me.”
Life of a designer
As part of a job at Stephen & Penelope, Julia went to a yarn festival in Finland.
A crucial step on Julia’s way to becoming a knitting pattern designer, was her job at Stephen & Penelope. “Working in a yarn shop? Dream job!” she exclaims. At the time, Julia had knitted a simple Raglan sweater without a pattern, as this is how she learned it in Germany. When Malia Mae Joesph, one of the owners of the shop, introduced her to someone as ‘This is Julia, she is also a pattern designer’, it was a lightbulb moment for her, and she still smiles talking about it. Sometimes you just need a push from the outside world to set you on a path for which you did not have a name before.
At the same time, you have to give to yourself the validation, too. Take the freedom you want. “In the end, it is up to you to call yourself what you want.” For Julia, the freedom comes quite literally from having a day job that pays the bills. Being a knitting designer is an important part of her but not the only one. The regular income from her day job enables her to be selfish: “And I want the freedom to be selfish!”
Inspiring community
What’s on Julia’s to-knit list?
Secret new shawl pattern for a magazine
Julia’s work as a knitting designer is inspiring to me. Returning to the question of community, she concludes “I feel that what I can to contribute, is not yet there. It’s something completely unique and maybe something I am missing from knitting designs right now. I want to also give it a nudge into a certain direction.”
I got goosebumps in that moment because it hits so close to what I try to achieve with this blog. Julia and I agree that if you pour your time and energy into something you’re passionate about, it needs to be and feel 100% aligned to your own vision.
“What is important in the end is that you trust your own instinct of where you want to go.”
I ended the interview with a big smile on my face. Not only because I had just held my first interview for the Knit Current blog but also because I felt so welcomed by Julia. Connections like these are what make the knitting community to be as special as it is and I am happy to be a part of it.
You can find Julia’s self-published designs on her website Julia Wilkens Designs and all patterns, including the ones she published in magazines, on Ravelry. Follow her on Instagram or check out her YouTube podcast with Matilda Ross: Greatest Knits.