Marlie de Swart never relies on patterns when she knits a new sweater, vest or bonnet. Instead, she sketches a rough plan and makes decisions about textures and construction as she goes, letting the piece grow and morph organically, stitch by stitch. It was a bit of a challenge, then, to write her first book, a collection of 25 knitting patterns released this month.
But Ms. de Swart, whose bright energy is reflected in the painterly qualities of her dyed-wool sweaters and the intricate designs that play on her paneled pieces, is a lifetime knitter. In her book, “Knitting Woolscapes: Designs Inspired by Coastal Marin Wool,” she wanted to both promote the local fibershed—whose products are showcased in her Point Reyes Station knitting shop and collective, Black Mountain Artisans—and to push her own capacities.
“The reason why I did this—wrote a book—is because in whatever you do, you have to get a proficiency, and try to reach the ultimate of whatever you can reach in a certain media,” Ms. de Swart said.
Barbara MacDonald, a friend and member of the collective, tested each—in some cases, knitting a pattern up to seven times. For her, the book showed her just how creative and complex Ms. de Swart’s work is; often, the knitter must knit in many directions, creating sophisticated cuts.
“She always does something new that’s innovative,” Ms. Macdonald said. “She does a lot of what’s called knitting ‘off the axis,’ which adds to the shaping and interest of the piece. In usual knitting books, you seldom see something like that.”
Ms. de Swart comes from a creative family: her father was a painter, her uncle a sculptor and her brother Peter, who lives in Inverness, an artist and sculptor. Ms. de Swart herself has also made ceramics and kimonos.
She spent much of her childhood in a small town in Holland, and learning to knit was a bit inevitable. Two of her aunts, Franciscan nuns, taught knitting to high schoolers, and her mom spun wool and knitted. And the village abutted small farms that provided the family easy access to fleece.
She moved to the United States when she was 18, first to Los Angeles, where her uncle lived, to study and work. “And to explore the world, of course,” she said.
After a year in Paris, she attended Occidental College on a scholarship; later, at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, she met her husband, Bruce. The two moved to Holland for three years, where he designed department stores and she got into the burgeoning computer industry, starting with translation work for IBM. (Growing up in the Netherlands, she had learned English, French and German, along with her native Dutch.)
While in Amsterdam, Ms. de Swart knitted as much as she could and also spun yarn out of fleeces a friend gave her. There are a lot of sheep in Holland, she said, noting that they often graze on the county’s prevalent dikes where larger animals, like cows, would sink.
Making yarn is laborious, she went on. “There is an enormous amount of process involved. You get a raw fleece, which has dirt and dingelbells and everything in it.”
To get clean, raw fleece has to be soaked in what is called a suint bath to draw out the lanolin and grease. The process takes days. Then the fleece is washed, dried (in Holland, which borders the North Sea, that takes a while, too, she said) dyed and finally spun.
After leaving Amsterdam, Ms. de Swart and her husband moved to Silicon Valley, where she started setting up software companies. She traveled constantly, often two weeks a month, largely to Europe and Asia, helping companies set up offices and distribution networks.
At home, she barely had time to knit. When she turned 50, Ms. de Swart realized she was exhausted by travel and needed to turn to more creative endeavors. “I thought, if I don’t do what my passion is, I’ll never do it,” she said. “I always wanted a life that had more to do with creativity.”
Ms. de Swart moved to Bolinas full-time, where she had a house, and soon joined a cooperative known as Black Mountain Weavers. After about six years, while the group was facing membership and financial issues, she took the helm.
She continued to run it as a cooperative, changing the name to Black Mountain Artisans and expanding the store’s offerings. These days there are six active members, who work at the store, and another 34 inactive members who sell their wares there.
For the past 15 or so years, Ms. de Swart has also co-taught spinning and weaving classes at Windrush Farm, in Chileno Valley, with owner Mimi Luebbermann. “She is the most fabulous, energetic teacher,” Ms. Luebbermann said. “She has so much infectious enthusiasm. Learning to spin is very difficult—like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time—and the machine can be cranky. But she makes the learning easy.”
Ms. de Swart’s own pieces are often complex, in coloring and the layers of detail. She often constructs her pieces in many panels, she said, in part so that she can pull pieces apart if she wants to change them.
“Her works are really art pieces,” said her brother Peter. “It seems you would need to be theoretical physicist to knit like that.”
Ms. de Swart draws inspiration from the fiber she’s working with—typically sheep, llama or angora rabbit—and each unique skein she knits, as well as memories and the natural world. The design on the back of one cardigan was drawn from “the lines in the dark earth after a field is plowed,” a memory from Holland, she wrote in the book. One hat, designed to cover the ears, recalls old farmers from Holland who would take off their hats in church, revealing ears frayed and chapped from the cold and wind.
In her studio—where you can also see buttons she makes—are many more sweaters not featured in the book. One sports a diamond-like design on the back that alludes to the stained-glass church windows that her fathered repaired after World War II.
One thing virtually all the pieces have in common is that they are originals. “The way I approach knitting is not that I create a line to have produced,” she said. “I create one-of-a-kind garments usually, that’s it. Part of the reason is that it’s so boring to repeat the same thing! To me, it’s unbelievably boring…Every sweater of mine is different.”