The Bathtub Swimming Experiment and Other Pandemic-Era Knitting Fables

When the pandemic hit, the undaunted members of the Ball's Falls Knitting Club agreed they would continue to meet by Zoom. However, the isolation and the closure of their local yarn store had its impact on their knitting projects. Rubetta, for instance, decided to take up speed knitting and allow herself just three hours per project so as to have more time for her new pandemic hobbies: gerbil breeding and writing novels in a language she made up herself.     

Veraminta, meanwhile, ran short of yarn, and had to get creative with the all the throws, cushion covers, and bathmats in the house.

Valma made it one of her pandemic goals to learn to do her hair, and she found braiding such a challenge that she found it necessary to practice braiding at every opportunity.

Mavis went in a more artistic direction with her knitting, and designed a piece that commemorated the most important and fulfilling relationship of her pandemic life.   

Luella found it so difficult to focus during quarantine that, when she got bored with the new dress she had designed, she adapted her plan to have elbow sleeves and fringe from the thighs down. After all, she reminded herself, the really important thing was to have a sense of accomplishment and completion.

Aliviyah decided to prepare for post-pandemic life by knitting herself a new beach ensemble. She was pleased with the resulting look, but she did have concerns about how well it was going to stay on when it got wet given that her bathtub swimming experiment had proved discouraging. 

Janis was so busy with working from home and homeschooling her triplets that she tried to combine her line drawing art projects with her knitting projects so as to have time for both. 

Beverley decided that her pandemic knitting challenge would be to use up her entire yarn stash... in a single project. 

Like Veraminta, Donnelda had a yarn shortage problem, which she dealt with by making embellishments for her existing sweaters out of what scraps she did have on hand. 

Asher decided to channel his pandemic time into launching a new knitting publication. The rest of the Ball's Falls Knitting Club sincerely wished him the best with his new publishing endeavour, but they couldn't imagine where he was going to find content for it.  

Ill-Timed Moments of Clarity and Other Knitting Fables

It was the end of the school year, and the graduating class of the Acme School of Design was putting on their final student fashion show. Lucretia proudly modelled her project, which had what she called her "signature layered look" and what her teachers had come to resignedly call her "placemats, curtains, and remnant decor fringes tacked together" look.

Verna's project theme had been "A Bowl of Oatmeal". Her instructor pointed out that she'd been using very similar themes all year, such as with her projects "Cream of Wheat", "Tuna on White Bread", "Homogenized Milk" and "Like White on Rice", and that perhaps it was time to try using a more extended colour palette, and possibly also to look into getting treated for her protracted case of situational depression.

Dyce, who was very likely the most dedicated H.P. Lovecraft fan living, was very proud of her Cthulhu dress.

Fionnula, always the practical one, had devised a sweater that was both suitable for very cold weather and, when combined with a Swiffer mop handle, great for reaching those hard-to-dust spots under the bed and above the window cornices.

Merle had decided it was time the child's traditional romper went adult and post-modern.

Rhona was very proud of her combination of sixties-style florals and granny chic, as she considered the outfit a profound statement on the divide between sixties youth culture and that of The Greatest Generation. For her next project, she planned to go with a "Jackie O. Goes Filthy Hippie" theme.

Avis, ever the worst procrastinator in the class, had had to whip something up at the last minute and then not quite finished it, but she was pretty sure her asymmetrical mesh tank was a strong enough look that she didn't need to worry that she hadn't been able to make the pants that were supposed to go with it.

Libby felt her design niche was going to be creating looks for people who felt the cold everywhere but on the inside of their elbows, as her own experience had been that this was an critically under-served market.

Garth's recycled tin foil yarn was a big hit. He just wished it wasn't so painful to knit with.

Parnell had been pretty happy with his "R2D2 Discovers Pastel Street Style" look until he got halfway down the aisle, where he had a most unfortunate and ill-timed moment of clarity.

Dropping Shoulders With a Vengeance & Other Knitting Fables

Clothilde wasn't about to let her limited knowledge of knitting techniques stop her from realizing her dream of being a knitwear designer.

Henrietta had designed a look she thought was perfect for the mothers of small children to wear on car trips: a checkboard outfit with pockets to keep the checkers in.

Inspired by her the success of the checkerboard outfit, Henrietta next designed a tic tac toe sweater. She was pleased with it too although her friends exhausted their ingenuity trying to find out ways to gently point out that it would be better if she hadn't pre-finished the game.

After receiving a particularly scathing review from that narrow-minded knitwear reviewer on The Knitting Needle and the Damage Done, Ruby dropped the shoulders on her next design with a vengeance.

Buddy was always looking for subtle new ways to use his designs to signal that he was a Friend of Dorothy.

Kimbra prided herself on her practicality and considered that her invention of armwarmers that could also be used as legwarmers was particularly inspired.

Kimbra, who had initially decided that she'd peaked with her arm and legwarmers idea, pleasantly surprised herself when she then came up with a romper that could also be used as a fetal position pod.

Jemma found there was nothing like a spot of strategically placed embroidery to pull together an outfit that basically consisted of random knitting swatches.

Candra, who loved heavy knitwear but found it tended to be too warm for her, eventually came to a life-changing epiphany: she could resolve the problem with proper ventilation.

Model Brianna did not know why designers insisted on making sweaters twice as wide as was necessary, but she inwardly resolved that her next contract would stipulate that her employers were going to be picking up the tab for her chiropractor bill.

Free the Feather Boas and Other Knitting Fables

Shanice felt fashion was all about balance. One could wear a too small skirt anywhere as long as one coordinated it with too much hat.

Hunter felt her Bathmat Vest was perfect for camping trips. Why pack towels or a sleeping bag when she had the perfect multi-purpose item?

Carly had done pretty well at finding a colour-blocked handbag to go with her colour blocked ensemble, but try as she would she had not been able to find the right colour-blocked shoes. But then, she reminded herself, she couldn't expect shoe designers to be ahead of the curve like her.

Molly, Jenna, and Nia were thrilled with their new "Edwardian lingerie as outerwear" looks, but agreed that for their next round of designs someone really had to go whole hog and wear the bloomers.

Tierra saw no reason why feather boas should always be confined to the neck region. Feather boas deserved to roam free! Or failing that, to at least be given the chance to be a skirt now and then.

Claire did her best to make "green" outfits by working with found materials. Her latest creation employed garbage bags, a fishing net, and part of a suit left behind by her last ex-boyfriend.

Mauve took the ordinary pale blue cabled turtleneck she'd been given for her birthday and gave it some real personality by adding ruffles and braids and hooked loops of roving. It was a bit of a drag to have to put so much work into her gifts, but her family just couldn't seem to understand her personal style. Or remember that her name was Mauve now.

Michaela was so thrilled with her new knitted pajamas that she'd sometimes levitate for sheer pleasure.

Iris got halfway down the runway before she began to wonder if the dresser had forgotten something. Could it be her pants? No, that didn't seem to be it.

Nicola so hated weaving in ends that she'd decided to just not do it and turn the ends into a design feature.

Moths Are Practically Butterflies and Other Knitting Fables

Cherith got halfway down the runway before she got a nightmarish feeling that the knitted tarantula on the bottom of her sweater had come to life and was crawling towards her face. She could only hope that her terror didn't show on her face.

Trinity thought her relaxed cardigan jacket design was best accessorized with a smart leather belt and nipples.

Winifred's new baseball design dress was a homage to her favourite sport. She was planning a second football-inspired design in tribute to her second favourite sport, but was having trouble sourcing enough pigskin.

Hetty designed what she considered the perfect desert travel outfit, only to wind up with sunburnt knees and heatstroke when she visited an actual desert. She contented herself with creating what she thought was a very convincing photoshop job for her travel album, and did her best to forget the way all the Bedouins had made fun of her.

Magda's friends found it difficult to make her understand that, though they loved her new off the shoulder sweater, it required a level of styling that, at a minimum, meant changing out of her pyjamas first.

Ester's new ensemble turned out to be as useful for finding her way around her darkened house when she came home late at night as she had hoped, but had an unexpected downside in that it scared her cats into fits.

Shauna felt that her new job as an llama herder required that she wear a llama (or at least alpaca) sweater and a certain elongated silhouette in dress. How could the llamas ever trust her if she didn't appear to be one of them?

Dana's new spring ensemble included her moth-eaten sweater, because what could be more spring-like than butterflies? And moths are practically butterflies.

As a true believer in artistic integrity, Jarvis was thrilled that he'd found a way to reconcile his recently developed appreciation of Picasso with his boyhood love of Mr. Potato Head.

When Mavis didn't finish her knitted jumpsuit in time for the colder months as she'd hoped, she adapted it for spring wear by changing the top's design from a turtleneck into a tank top and adding cut outs to the side.