In da Club I: Miriam Jarrs aka welthase

When I started thinking about Strickmich! Club, “welthase” yarns were on the top of my list. I had a couple of skeins that I found in my favorite yarn store (Mylys in Hamburg). Those yarns had a subtle, soft shine to them and intense but delicate colors – just beautiful! I had also browsed welthase’s Etsy Store and found that Hamburg artist Miriam Jarrs was the creative force behind welthase yarns. An internationally successful artist – I felt a little intimidated about asking her to join my club. What would she think of that? Would she have the time for dyeing yarn for my club in between gallery openings in London and work at her studio in Hamburg?

One morning, I sent her an e-mail and shortly after my phone rang: It was Miriam! She loved the idea of a yarn club using my patterns and said she would very much like to participate. She spontaneously invited me to come over and have a look an her yarns. An hour later I sat comfortably in her living room, sipping tea, admiring pretty yarns and colors – and talking to a passionate knitter and dyer: “I just love to knit, and I am addicted to colors and yarns!” Miriam always has very special colorways in her mind when choosing yarn for her projects, and those are not so easy to find. So she started dyeing her own a couple of years ago: “I love the sensuality of the whole process. It’s exiting! Will it turn out the way I wanted it to be?” As an artist, Miriam has a special way to deal with colors and a lot of experience. She knows about the moods that colors evoke, and she knows which pigments to mix to achieve a certain effect. Miriam feels that dyeing yarn and painting are creative processes that stimulate each other: “Lately I started on a painting, completely different from my other beginnings and stopped, it seemed to lead nowhere. I decided to start dyeing yarn – and there it was, a stunning new colour, a new way of dyeing… Now I can’t wait to go on with my painting again, because now I know how to continue.”

“golden” painting by Miriam Jarrs (2008, 200 x 300 cm, oil on canvas)

In her paintings, Miriam works from light to dark, such that the picture remains abstract until it is almost finished. The lighter shapes are formed by painting their dark surroundings as a contrast, not by painting the light objects themselves. That way, her works receive their very special glow. And that kind of glow can also be found in her yarns:

Miriam has agreed to dye such a very special, glowing color for our Strickmich! Club. I can’t wait!

Oh, and one more question for our dyer-artist: Why is her yarn label “welthase” (German: “world-bunny”)? That’s not really yarn-related, is it? Miriam’s answer is as original as plausible: “I love the picture of something so cute as a rabbit or hare, imagining itself as being cosmopolitan and very much at home in the endless universe, sitting there calm and comfortable, knitting away.”