Finishing date: September 2020. Styling by Natalia Salazar and photographed by Katja Malmborg in November 2020.
Natalia’s dragon-scale jumper. Made from a fine linen-cotton blend from Ullcentrum Öland. The scale pattern is by Lavish Craft, but otherwise it was imagined by Natalia and me together, and executed by me over the course of many many many hours of binging TV shows or listening to fantasy audiobooks (I can really recommend “The Raven Rings” series by Siri Pettersen and “The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club” series by Theodora Goss. The “Temeraire” series by Naomi Novik was also nice, and felt particularly appropriate, as it is about a dragon aviator and his dragon).
I’ve shared the story of making this jumper, how I had to knit and unravel and knit and unravel and knit again. The risk you run when engaging in experimental knitting design. The most time-consuming piece I’ve ever made, I called it. But also that, for Natalia, any amount of time would have been worth it. We’ve been keeping each other sane during this the Year of the Pandemic with our weekly Skype viewings of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
And then, finally, on a gray November Sunday, she biked all the way across town to try it on and to have it photographed. Natalia is always elaborate in her stylings, but this time. Man. The work that went into turning her hair that purple-blue. It didn’t matter that the sky was so compactly colorless, releasing a constant, light drizzle, because it made her blueness come alive. A dash of color against the water and rocks by Söderbysjön in Nackareservatet. An outfit fit for a real dragon hunter.
Katja Malmborg 