About me

My name is Jessica Ba and I am a keen knitter. Or at least Jessica Ba is the pseudonym I have chosen for this blog. What is authentic here is how passionate I am about knitting.

I live in Switzerland, which is a tiny country in central Europe. I live near lake Geneva and I go winter swimming there. When you get out of the water, you need some 100% wool, very warm garments to put on. Thus my interest for traditional Scandinavian colourwork designs.
The climate is Switzerland is changing at a tremendous speed, however. Thus my interest in sustainable knitting and my explorations with knitting cotton, linen, etc. I want my carbon footprint to stay as low as possible, thus I favour European yarn brands and European sheep breeds.

My native language is French. I am half British and my level of English is near-native (but not my spelling level !). Everyone in Switzerland has to learn at least one other national language. For me it was German. I kept it up through the years. From time to time, you will have me referencing to stuff that is in German. In Switzerland, the knitting tradition is almost inexistent, especially in the French-speaking part where I live. When I travel to the German-speaking part of Switzerland, I always go and see what new knitting books have been published. (Stauffacher in Bern is my budget’s doom – highly recommend – they’ve got a large selection of books in English too). But in the French-speaking part, knitting is dying out. And the quality of the knitting books that do get published is just dreadful. In short, what I know about knitting and my source of inspirations almost exclusively come from content that is published/posted in English or in German. There is nothing specifically Swiss about my own content creation on this blog.

For the time being, I think this is the extent of private information I am willing to share with you people. I don’t have the time or energy to answer emails. But if you have questions about me or wish to contact me, I suggest you live a comment down on the very first post of this blog. I will also try and respond to any (polite) comment you might want to leave below my posts.

I am a member of The Knitting Guild Assocation, which is an American-based knitting association. This gives me access to a wealth of content and some very well written knitting patterns. This guild is for me an endless source of inspiration and I wish I had found out about its existence earlier on.

October 2023, Jessica Ba