People have asked me how I came up with the name Lavender Hill Hippie. The short answer is because I found a sign and because one day ~ like in a stroke of lightning ~ I just had to crochet.

I saw a pattern for a hat “Raspberry toque: A crocheted hat” on Canadianliving.com. That was September 17, 2011. The article said it was “super-cute, cozy and quick-to-make”. The pattern called for Patons Divine yarn and a 6mm hook so I headed to my local wool shop The Sugar Pine to make my purchases. Oh ~ then I had to learn to crochet! I didn’t know what a “sc”, “dc”, “hdc”, “ch”, “sl st” was…thankfully the lovely owner of the Sugar Pine provided a ‘tear sheet’ “Lean to Crochet Instructions” published by Bernat.

After I finished my first hat, I was “hooked”! I couldn’t stop crocheting. I went from hats to slippers (creating my own slipper pattern); shawls to ponchos; stuffed toys to intricate Matryoshka dolls (creating my own Matryoshka pattern).

After each project was completed I was left with all these little balls of yarn in different colours and weights none sufficient to make anything and it was then that I decided that I’d like to try to recreate a bag that my sister had made for me years ago and that only existed today in my memory ~ But I would crochet it “free-style”. I would combine all these little odd-ball bits of yarn and the finished bag would be a jumble of colour and texture ~ all crazy and creative (like me) and thus a little “hippie“….

This time, I headed to Ravelry (an essential site for any knit or crochet enthusiast). I poured over the hundreds of patterns for “bags” and settled upon one whose structure, I thought, I could adapt to my idea to crochet “free-style” so that the finished work would be less about the “pattern” and  more focussed on my use of colour and texture. I would be in control of what colour, weight and the number of strands of yarn used for each stitch and, in this way, my bag would be unique ~ a one-of-a-kind ~ an art piece!

I made my bag ~ changing colours when the pattern looked “just right” and finished it off  with a large vintage button from my grandmother’s button bag. I slung it over my shoulder and there I was ~ back in the 70s with my groovy “hippie bag“.

This is that bag:

So that is where the “Hippie” part of my name came from…as to the “Lavender Hill” part… that was an equally long process but I’ll make this part of the story, short.

I bought this little piece of land and on my first day exploring the property I found a sign screwed to the wall of the kennel. The sign read, “Lavender Hill Organics”….since I had planned to come up with an appropriate name to call my new home/land: “Lavender Hill” it was.  

When I formed my home-based business centred on my “one-of-a-kind artisan creations for home and whimsy…oh and Lavender too”, “Lavender Hill Hippie” was born.

Today, Lavender Hill Hippie continues to focus on Lavender and lavender products created from lavender grown on the land. And while I do still pick up a hook and yarn, I have returned to my roots as a visual artist examining and interpreting my daily experiences through the medium of paper and the art of paper-cutting.