The Woven Witch Outfit

When the things I make become the things I wear

There is something rather special about looking in the mirror and realising that what you are wearing is no longer simply an outfit.

It is a collection of things that came from your own hands.

Today I put together what I have started thinking of as my Woven Witch outfit — my handmade cardigan, my crochet bag, my purple flower earrings and, of course, the little enchanted bee brooch perched proudly on the front.

Individually, each of these pieces has its own story. Together, they have begun to look like something else entirely.

They look like me.

When I first returned to crochet, I don't think I could have imagined that I would soon be able to dress myself in things I had made. The cardigan began with balls of autumn-coloured yarn and many, many hours with a hook. The bag was another experiment. The earrings took crochet into something much smaller and more delicate. And the bee — well, the bee seems to have developed a personality and a job title of his own.

Somehow they all belong together.

Nothing matches in the conventional sense, and perhaps that is exactly why I love it. There are plums and oranges, browns and golds, metallic threads, different textures and different kinds of crochet. It is colourful, slightly eccentric, a little witchy and completely handmade.

It feels like Woven Witch.

And I think this outfit has helped me understand something about the identity I have been creating.

Woven Witch doesn't have to be one particular colour, one particular collection or one perfectly coordinated aesthetic. It can move between woodland colours, gothic pieces, delicate bridal work and strange little crocheted creatures. The thread connecting everything is the hand that made it.

Mine.

There is also something wonderfully satisfying about actually wearing my work.

These aren't pieces that I want to make only to photograph and put away. I want them to have lives. I want cardigans to become favourites that are thrown on again and again. I want bags to be carried until they soften with use. I want earrings and brooches to become those little things somebody automatically reaches for when getting dressed.

Perhaps that is why seeing everything together made me so happy.

For the first time, I wasn't just wearing a handmade cardigan or carrying a handmade bag.

I was wearing Woven Witch.

And considering this all began with me picking up a crochet hook again, that feels rather magical.

One hook. A lot of yarn. And the beginnings of an eccentric artisan's wardrobe.

— Gani
Founder & Maker, Woven Witch