Maker Spotlight: Aoibhe Ni

This month's Maker Spotlight takes us across the Atlantic to Ireland, where Aoibhe Ni (pronounced AY-vah NEE) has spent over fifteen years reimagining what's possible with a single crochet hook. A pioneer of the "short hook" Tunisian crochet method, Aoibhe designs stunning lace and colorwork shawls that require no specialty tools -- just a regular hook, some yarn, and a willingness to play.

Her Legendary Shawls collections, with designs named after figures from world mythology, have earned a devoted following for their clever geometry, meticulous construction, and the sense of discovery woven into every pattern. Whether she's teaching beginners their first stitches or dreaming up new ways to coax curves from straight lines, Aoibhe brings warmth, wit, and an infectious belief that there are no mistakes in crochet -- only alternative methods. We're so happy to share her story with you.

Q.  All of your Tunisian crochet patterns use a standard-length crochet hook, instead of a longer hook or one with a cord. How did you develop your "short hook" method of Tunisian Crochet?

In a word, it was necessity.

I grew up in an isolated region of the Irish countryside, and with limited options available to me, I had to rely on the resources around me. Now, luckily, my Mam was and still is extremely crafty, so she had plenty of knitting needles and crochet hooks around, and the local women were more than happy to unload their unused stash on me from time to time, but something as exotic as a long Tunisian-style hook was definitely not part of my habitat.

My very first exposure to anything vaguely Tunisian was in a pattern book in my teens that contained – I think - a child's jacket that used lovely, tall crochet stitches which the designer linked together to make a dense, solid fabric. The designer worked with a short hook, in thick layers to built the jacket up. The idea seemed cool, but it wasn't until much, much later when a knitting friend taught me how to knit lace that the notion of linking tall crochet stitches together and adding lace elements to that plane field of fabric showed me the potential inherent in Short-Hook Tunisian crochet.

Also, my crochet hold is a little unusual, so a hook any longer than standard would forever get caught up my sleeve.

Shorter hooks just suit me better, I think.

Q. If you’re comfortable sharing, how has dyslexia influenced your pattern-writing style or the way you approach techniques? We’d also love to hear about any tools, methods, or approaches you use -- whether in your own work or when working with other published patterns -- that might help support accessibility for others.

I love that you're centering accessibility!

I honestly don't think dyslexia has had a huge impact on how I approach creativity. I have a really mild case of it that I can overcome with a bit of re-reading, patience with myself, and the occasional recitation aloud.

But my aphantasia is quite severe and that definitely has an effect on how I approach everything.

Aphantasia is a condition where a person's “mind's eye” is totally absent or only partially present. If you can't picture an image in your head, or you can only picture things as basic shapes with no detail, chances are you have it, too.

For a designer of a visual medium to have it seems counterintuitive. And in many ways it hinders me; not being able to visualise a finished piece as you're working is a real drag. Not being able to sketch concepts or choose colours intuitively and also stumbling blocks.

But in many ways it's also an advantage.

Firstly, if you're looking to be on the cutting edge of a certain field, not being able to see ahead of you can actually be quite a gift. It keeps you sharp, open to concepts that may not fit into a tidier design process. If I could visualise a two-colour crescent shawl, I'd end up designing a two-colour crescent shawl.

But if I'm unable to visualise anything at all, the possibilities become limitless. I quite literally discover the finished piece as I make it, and often I surprise myself with how it turns out. In a creative field, I think that freshness is invaluable.

For anyone who also deals with these problems, I have a few small work-arounds.

Sketching: Just because other designers sketch with ease, doesn't mean you have to. Come at your work with your stronger senses. For me, it's a sense of the pull and push in mathematics. “What happens if I add a Yarn Yver here, and a decrease there?” The negative and positive of it all is where I find most of my inspiration.

Colour matching: You have a camera app on your phone, right? Take a photo of the yarn you want to find a friend for. Invert to find its perfect compliment, and play with hue or light/darkness if you'd prefer something more harmonious. Then, take that altered image to your yarn shop and get digging.

Q.  Sometimes creativity is a flash of lightning, and sometimes it can be a much longer process. Were any of your patterns "effortless" to design? Are there any that you put in "time out" and came back to later?

Thanks - in no small part - to my aphantasia, designs tend not to be flashes of lightning for me. I simply have nowhere for the lightning to strike. Instead, ideas develop over time from a some sort of mathematical question or puzzle.

I do find segmented shawls are probably the smoothest to process from initial idea to publication. They have the great advantage of not needing to fit standard sizing grades – one size wraps all - and working a few segments is usually enough for me to know what shape I'll get if I continue. If I'm not happy – if the curve is too big, or the shawl is gonna end up too narrow – it's no trouble at all to rewrite to fix the problem and start again with a fresh sample.

Finola, and Bríd are two good examples of this trial-and-error process.

Q. What does your design process look like (from idea to published pattern)?

I'll start by asking something like “what happens if I put multiple triangles on top of each other?”, and that could evolve into “what if I off-set the segments?” or “what if I add a curve so the segments describe a spiral?”, “What if I add a hole in the middle and work this up as a sweater yoke?”, etc, etc... and then I work up a small sample, test the theory, decide if I like the result, and if I do, I make certain it is gradable for sizing, and get cracking from there!

That may seem nice and straightforward, but I promise; it's not. There is a massive heap of trial and error.

The downside to not knowing where you're going is you'll often bump into walls, but the upside is that an idea you had today may be useful down the road, so even failed swatches are worth holding on to.

Thank you for joining us in getting to know Aoibhe and her beautifully inventive approach to Tunisian crochet! Find her patterns, technique videos, and tutorials at YarnTowers.com, and follow along with her latest work on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also find her technique tutorials on her YouTube channel.

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