A small studio. A slow rhythm. A big love for fiber.
Loop & Thread has lived in many apartments, through two cats and one very patient partner, across seven seasons of yarn. This is where I share the stitches that make up my days.
Hi, I am Alba Martim. Textile designer, tea drinker, long-walk taker.
My grandmother taught me to knit in her kitchen when I was nine. I taught myself crochet in my twenties, when my first big-city apartment felt far too quiet. Today I design soft, wearable patterns for makers who want their handmade things to feel like home.
Loop & Thread is the journal I wish I had when I was learning — warm, unhurried, beginner-friendly, and generously photographed.
How a tangled skein became a little studio
A kitchen, a ball of wool, and nine-year-old hands
My grandmother Rosa sat me at her small pine table, handed me a pair of her bamboo needles, and said: “Two sticks and string, querida. Anything soft starts here.” I made a lopsided square that she framed.
A quiet apartment and a secondhand crochet book
My first flat in Lisbon was too quiet, too grown-up, too full of deadlines. I picked up a crochet hook in a bookshop, watched videos at midnight, and made a wonky granny square that I still keep in a drawer.
Loop & Thread begins
I posted my first pattern — a soft pink washcloth — on a Sunday morning, half-expecting no one to notice. A hundred and eleven people downloaded it that week. I cried, laughed, and kept posting.
A studio in Porto, and you on the other side of the screen
Today Loop & Thread is 150+ free patterns, a gentle Sunday newsletter, and a small community of makers from forty-two countries. It still feels like writing letters from a kitchen table.
Say hello — I really do write back.
Pattern questions, yarn crushes, studio collaborations, or just a note about your latest finished object — my inbox is a cozy place.
A little tour of the studio
Where the yarn lives, where the thinking happens, where most of my tea cups end up.
