Melanie Berg, who publishes under the pseudonym Mairlynd, is a knitwear designer living in Bonn, Germany. She describes herself like this: " . . . in my real life I'm a former IT-specialist, mother of three and a semi-successful housewife. In my secret second life I design knitwear". Her designs are feminine, bold, strongly textured in terms of stitch pattern and construction as well as color. In August of this year, she released her ebook Texture is the New Black, now available on Ravelry.
I first met Melanie in Cologne at the craft-oriented trade show H+H where she introduced herself as a JUL fan and visited me in the booth every day. I was not yet acquainted with her work at that time but when she talked about her designs I invited her to take my newest JUL closures home with her to see if they inspired something new. I'm delighted to be able to start offering downloads of some of her patterns that incorporate JUL, and which are available in both English and German versions. I so look forward to seeing how the collection of designs she creates using JUL as inspiration, and after the fact for styling, grows over time.