Arvum et Litus Behind the Scenes

Arvum et Litus

Hello everyone !!!

My very first collection is out officially out and online on the web. Although shipping is not yet available cuz I’m still waiting for the packaging to arrived, all of the products are online so you can learn more about the materials that i used and the origins of them.

What can i say, my very first baby to be shown to the world. I really considered this one to be my very first full collection. At first i wasn’t really sure how to tackle this. How many pieces there were going to be , what colours, what shapes. I have been crocheting for 2 years prior to really taking this idea and project as my future career. Soooo, I really wanted to create multiple looks from scratch and create the patterns myself. I ended up with many swatches, 2 full prototypes and 8 final looks. I’m soooooo happy with the results and how they turned out. All the details below 😉

It started with walks

The idea for Arvum et Litus came from walks. A lot of them. Remember you guys, this was during covid…. . I was lucky to have the woods at like 100 metes from where i lived at the time. In those woods you can see old paths, walls, there’s a vineyard on the other side that borders the old Autodromo de Terramar( and it is massive !!). I’ve come across wild boars a couple of times. I’ve walked these woods countless of times with my dog (may he rest in peace) in every season/weather. From cold and suuuuper foggy days in winter to fucking hot scorching days in summer. Oh i forgot to mention that it’s mostly a pine forest filled with wild rosemary and thyme. Yep it smells divine.

So, where did the ideas for the clothes come from ? from things I kept stopping to look at. (especially during a doobie walk 😉 ), you know, it’s that feeling when you walk and something catches your eyes and you go “wow that pink “, or “daaaamn that texture” or “Is that an ancient stone wall ?! “or even “wait a darn minute, is that an abandoned autodromo ?! (it’s not abandoned just hasn’t been used in a long while) “. Ooooh did i mention you also have views to the sea from the woods ?? the more you know 😉

That is how the collection started forming. Eight pieces, each one named for something I kept stopping to look at.

Sketching and colours

The design process was a back and forth between sketches and yarn. I would draw a silhouette, then the yarn would change it. Or I would find a colour combination and let it decide the shape. They went hand in hand you can’t really separate them.

I also had a lot to learn. Arvum et Litus was, in many ways, a learning curve disguised as a collection. I taught myself to work top down, figured out increases and decreases through trial and error, learned about tension, learned about frogging (which for anyone who doesn’t know the world of crochet, is the slightly dramatic term for unraveling your work and starting again from scratch. I frogged a lot, like a loooooot.

Okay, flash back time. In the weekend of the 5th and 6th of November 2022, I attended my first Barcelona Knit Festival and i had such a wonderful time . That’s where i discovered a lot of local yarn, sheep herders, Washing/processing mills, dyers and spinners. You will most likely hear a lot about Wooldreamers (little back story time : they are a fourth-generation family mill in Castilla-La Mancha founded by Ramón, working directly with small Spanish shepherds to transform local wool like Manchega, Merino Entrefino and others into stunning, traceable yarn, entirely within Spain.) I also met David and Jackson that run El Robledal de la Santa, a small farm in Cáceres, Extremadura, raise their own angora goats. They produce pure Spanish mohair from their own herd, fully traceable, right down to the individual animal ( shoutout to Miss Vanjie and Katya, yes that’s their names and they are queens). Finally Eva and Kiara, the founders of Lalanalú, A yarn studio and community in the Gràcia neighborhood of Barcelona. They produce their own yarn line entirely within Spain mulesing-free, spun and dyed locally, with wool from La Huertona farm in León. I bought almost all the yarn that i used for the colleciton from them.

I have photos of sample swatches i made . Every piece in this collection started as a small square of stitch, testing the feel of the yarn, the density of the fabric, the way the colour behaved in different lights. Those swatches are their own kind of archive.

Test Shoot

The pictures that you see on the left ( up for mobile users) are from a test shoot on the balcony of the apartment i used to live in with my dad during covid. On the right ( down for mobile users) , some behind the scenes. The idea for this test was to determine how i was going to accessorize them. I tried with a leather black pant, a long white cotton skirt, a red meshy cotton skirt and a white cotton shirt. All of these were bought at Humana second hand store in Barcelona. I decided early on that anything that i use to accessorize my garments has to also be sustainable. FYI i used a white linen fabric for the background that was later used to make another shirt :). Alsoooo the sun was hitting juuust right.

Conclusion ??? i went with white, you can see my products better.

Aitona Recon

During lockdown in one of my doomscrolling sessions i came across the region of Aitona, in Lleida. I immediately put it on a list of places I wanted to visit once the world opened again. I learned that the fruit orchards there bloom for about two weeks in March pink and sometimes white blossom as far as you can see, against a cold blue sky. I knew that was the backdrop I wanted. So we (my family and i ) went end of February 2023 to check the area. We where paying attention to backdrops, lighting, compilations and trying to guess a bit the best place once the trees are in full bloom. One of the ideas was to use the outside wall of a house that had a wisteria branch on it (see foto on the left, or down for phone users). It was overlooking a big field. There was also a small river we passed by , again this could have been a really nice location. We spend around 5 hours getting a lay of the land. I was really happy with all the spots that we found ,it was up to mother nature now and for us to wait for the blooming seasons.

On the way back we went through the mountain roads and the view at the stop was spectacular.
Yeeees , success !!

Shooting Day, Pink

Shooting day was officially on the 19th March 2023. But wait !!!!. Let me take you a few days back up to 2 week back. I kid you not i was calling the tourism office in Aitona every day, to ask if the flowers have started blooming or not. In the meantime, i was finishing up the last 2 pieces (which btw, i finished the Floris top and the straps for Terra in the car on the way there), and preparing the camera , batteries , extra looks, the microphone to record the ambient sound (soooo goood, you can hear insects and birds flying around), light reflectors , fooood and beverages.

On the 16th of March i call them and they finally confirmed that the blooming season has started and that we only had 2 weeks to do it. Sooooo excited (and nervous) but it as a “gogogogogo” moment .

D-day arrives. We head to Aitona and I’m not kidding you when i say that it’s a sea of pinks. Its an uncountable numbers of rows of pink. And hello ?! that sky !! blueeeee.
I was the photographer and my cousin the model. Mom and Dad were also helping me with lighting. We shot in two locations , the first in one of the rows of trees with my cousin as the model. The second location was in another area and we used the mannequin (called Brunhilda). The shoot lasted a solid 6 hours. We were exhausted after this.

The pictures came out unbelievable and so happy with the results.

Names

To be perfectly honest with you, even after doing the shoot and having all the pictures ready, i still didn’t know what to call the collection nor the products. I knew that i wanted maximum one word for the products and something short for the collection.

Flashforward to March 2026 and after a lot of other things I’ve been working on (you will soon see), i finally had the idea for names. It was after a visit to a winery near Villafranca del Penedés that i had the idea. During that visit, the tour guide took us around the property to see the different grapes. On the way to one of the vineyards we made a stop near the woods following an old road and after walking for like 5 minutes the guide told us to look at the floor and try to guess what this was ( picture on the right, or below if mobile), wanna take a guess ???? old firing kilns for clay amphoras for wine dating back to roman times. You can still find if you try to look closely clay shards around this area. Soooo it got me thinking and I was like i should definitely use Latin for the names.

And so the naming started, each piece named after what i was inspired by but in lating. In order of production we have :
Signum (signaling the way forward or that you took a wrong turn)
Herba ( all the wild herbs that you find in the woods)
Viride ( the woods after a pouring rain, full of life)
Sol ( i think this one is pretty self explanatory )
Petra (stone, and lichen growing on stone)
Mare ( The stunning sea )
Floris (Pink bougainvillea in full bloom, yes it’s very pink)
Terra (the soil itself , slightly humid )
And for the Collection’s name Arvum et Litus , Field and Shore. The fields are cultivated land which in this case is Aitona and then the Shoreline of Sitges, where i live.

What’s next ?

Again I’m so happy this collection is finally out. And i hope you enjoyed the glimpse behind the scenes.
For what comes next, stay tuned cuz i already have the next collection ready and all the other projects as well.

And whith that i will say Farewall enjoy the little teaser below 😉