Liadain O'Driscoll from Cork on her craft journey.

Everything starts at Blarney Street.

In the longest  residential street not only of Cork City but the whole Country with 350 houses.  One of its inhabitants, close to the hill, Ms. Liadain O’Driscoll has made a handmade blanket in crochet: “I basically made one row to represent each house. So it came out as this huge, big thing. At the beginning I thought that I might just use it as a blanket. But, midway through, I realised that this was really more an art piece, and it works as an art piece as well. If you were to exhibit, that's around 300 households: it's an interesting piece of folk history. It's like a snapshot of what colour each house was on the street around this time.”

She has recently become a member of the Cork Craft and Design Organisation, getting one step closer to finding a location for her art piece and everyone to enjoy.

I had the opportunity of seeing it in person, and, I must confess: I was amazed. It took some strength getting to her house, since she’s closer to the hill I had to go through the whole street but that made the blanket ever so special. Without even being aware of it, I was taking in all the colours of the streets to then see them displayed on Ms. Driscoll’s art.

When I got in touch with her for the interview, she was polite and well disposed: not only did she agree quickly to the interview (even suggesting some dates), she also opened her door to me, and suggested that I go there for the interview. And now I understand the reason behind it. She wanted me to experience the street to let me understand what her art represents. 

Days before the interview, she emailed me giving me all the directions to her house, routes to take and even suggested taking a taxi in case I had to bring a lot of equipment since she lives on a hill, and just take in what Blarney Street had to offer. 

Getting to her house, well the only thing I can say is that it  speaks so much to her character. Full of finished and unfinished crafting projects, full of artefacts of her family… and, I almost thought I was in a farm for a second! She has areas of the house dedicated to her guinea pigs to hang out and also be safe. I would say that after crochet and knitting, taking care of them is what she loves the most.

She’s a crochet and knitter from West Cork, now living in Cork City. She actually moved to Blarney Street fairly recently, buying a house there. And well, the blanket was kind of a symbol of all the sacrifices that got her there. 

Crafts, especially crochet, are coming back around. Starting with the pandemic and people being bored at home, a lot of people picked it up as a hobby. Especially younger generations: on Tik Tok the topic of crochet is trendy, a lot of content is created on it so it’s nice to get Liadain’s perspective: she crocheted her whole life!

I asked what she thinks about this resurgence and she had such a positive attitude:  “I even noticed that it has made its way back into fashion, you'll see like granny square cardigans and things like that. It’s clear that these things come in cycles and now is the time for it to come back around and stay for a while.”

She welcomed me into her house, offered me a glass of water and we just had a brief chat, just to get to know each other a little more before spending the rest of the afternoon together. All of this while she also finished her lunch.

It was really important for me to be as accommodating to her needs as possible, she works from home because of her illness and I didn’t want to stretch her too thin. But I won’t talk for her, I will now let her speak, and explain in her own words her illness: “I have chronic fatigue syndrome which is also known as ME. There are quite a lot of similarities with long covid, so it’s starting to be a little more understood now. The main symptom obviously is severe fatigue, which isn’t relieved by rest or by sleeping. You could have 8 hours of sleep and feel more tired. It’s also characterised by something called post-exertional malaise, which is basically almost like getting a hangover from any kind of overexertion: it doesn’t have to be exercise, it can be just doing whatever is too much for you, for some severely ill people, that could be just brushing their teeth that day.”

She works from home now, mostly because she needs to take frequent breaks and naps during the day in order to function and be as productive as her peers without illnesses. 

Crochet and knitting is a hobby that she picked up while she was very young, and, if I may add, it’s really clear how her family encouraged her and is such a big inspiration to her. Most of her family is and was somehow involved in the arts: might it be with music, architecture, painting, writing… If you can think of some art activity, she probably has someone in her family that has mastered it.

She talks about her family and the influence they had on her with such joy, she seems really proud of her upbringing: “I'm from such a background of artists and craftspeople and sculptors and musicians and what have you. And so I always kind of thought, you know, I'm not writing novels, or music or anything like that, though, I did used to be in bands for like 10 years, but I didn't really write music at all. So I always felt that I actually wasn't that creative. But I came to realise in the last few years that there are other sorts of creativity besides writing novels, and writing, music and so on.”

Liadain found in the crafts a way to be productive, ease her mind when it feels too overcrowded and something to do when she may feel too sick to go outside: “ It’s something to do that needs very low energy. I don’t have the energy to leave the house but I do have the energy to sit up on the couch. I am a very fidgety person, if I wasn't crocheting, knitting, doing things like that, I would be just chewing my nails, or playing with my hair, pulling threads from my jumper or whatever. So it definitely just gives me something to do with my hands and helps me focus in that way.”

Eventually we started talking about her business. She started selling her projects around 2018. She was saving up for her house, bought 2 years ago: “I set up my Instagram back in 2018 and put some things up there. Even though I wasn’t really planning on actively making money from it, I just make such a big volume of stuff that it’s not even about making money, if I start to cover the cost, that would be brilliant.”

The challenges were many, especially with a full time job other than this new business and her illness: “It didn’t take me too long to realise that running a business, making handmade crochet or knitted stuff is just not a feasible business model in this day and age, at all. Unless you were to charge designer prices, but then you would have to put so much effort into marketing around that and so on and I’m just not that bothered. I have a full time job and of course, I’m also tired. But I suppose that, as people who crochet and knit know, the materials are not cheap and it takes a lot of time. It’s just not feasible as a money making activity. Most people in this field live off things related to the craft, such as pattern design, but it’s an overflowing market.”

However, as we all know, she’s on her way to great things: she’s a new member of the Cork Craft and Design organisation, starting to sell some of her creations to the public very soon and one step closer to showing her blanket to the world.