I'm Nikki McClain, the fiber artist and worldbuilder behind Knot of 8.

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My roots reach back to Iceland and Italy, two places with long traditions of folklore, old beliefs, and stories woven into the landscape. I have always been drawn to the older ways people understood the world~to the idea that forests, mountains, water, weather, and the unseen might hold lives and stories of their own.

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My Icelandic ancestry in particular has always held a strong pull for me, and its folklore and relationship with the natural world have deeply influenced the atmosphere of my work. Fornmordir is not a recreation of Icelandic mythology, but an imagined world of my own, shaped by that same sense that the landscape is alive, mysterious, and inhabited by more than we can see.

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Every creature begins with a single strand of yarn. I don't work from patterns or preliminary sketches. Instead, each piece grows freely in my hands, discovering its own form, posture, expression, and personality as it is made. No two are ever alike because no two journeys are the same.

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As these creatures emerged, so did the world they belong to. That world is Fornmordir.

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Fornmordir is built upon an ancient fabric, not cloth, but the living weave from which every place, creature, memory, and story is formed. Mountains, forests, rivers, and even the smallest wanderer are threads within the same endless tapestry. Nothing exists apart from it. Every knot strengthens the whole, and every loose thread has the power to reshape it.

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Knot of 8 is my way of bringing small pieces of that woven world into ours.

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Each sculpture is not simply inspired by fantasy, it is imagined as something discovered within Fornmordir. Every creature has a place, a history, and a role within its four elemental realms: Root & Stone, Wind & Veil, Flame & Will, and Tide & Depth.

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This world is still unfolding.

The Field Journal continues to grow with new species, folklore, relics, symbols, and stories as each new inhabitant is discovered and welcomed into the weave.

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About the Photography

Every Knot of 8 creature is a real, one-of-a-kind handmade crochet sculpture. To bring the world of Fornmordir to life, each sculpture is photographed and placed into a digitally created environment that represents its natural habitat. The creatures themselves are never digitally created.