It's Curtains for Your Latest Knitting Project

I've sewn many a set of curtains, but I never thought of knitting window treatments. Now that I have, it actually seems like a sound idea for sheer-type window treatments: they can be knitted in any size, colour, and texture you wish, and it will drape beautifully. The pattern for the picture above is available on KnitPicks.





Here's another knitted curtain pattern from Joanne Seiff on Ravelry. There's no need for a knitted curtain to be white lace. It can be any colour you like, and have a modern and minimalist yet interesting texture.





Here's another window treatment idea from Lion Brand. This one doesn't involve actual knitting, and just requires a novelty yarn, beads, and a lot of knotting and tying.





This, of course, is filet crochet, not knitting, but if you want a sheer with any kind of image in it, filet crochet allows for endless possibilities.

Coming up: Look for a review of the Knit n' Style Summer 2013 issue tomorrow!

Now You Knit It, Now You Don't

Shadow knitting, or illusion knitting, is a knitting technique for making knitted pieces that appear to be only striped when viewed straight on but contain a hidden image only viewable from an angle. The effect is created by alternating rows of two coloured yarns so that the raised stitches from one row hide the flat stitches of another row when seen from certain aspects. The "Girl With a Pearl Earring" piece above is an example of illusion knitting.






There's no way to convey the total impact of such a piece in a photograph or in a written description, so please see the video above for a better demonstration of how the image appears and disappears depending on one's vantage point. This piece is from Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer of Woolly Thoughts. You can view a gallery of their extraordinary illusion designs here. All of the Woolly Thoughts patterns are for sale on their website or via their Ravelry page.





If you're interested in trying your hand at illusion knitting, you can begin by checking out Wikihow's illusion knitting tutorial, or browsing the hundreds of illusion knitting projects on Ravelry, many of the patterns for which are available for free. The best of the patterns are from the Woolly Thoughts designers and are quite large and elaborate, but there are a number of smaller, simpler projects, such as scarves and dishcloths. If you have enough scarves and hate knitted dishcloths like I do, I recommend the very striking tulip cushion pattern shown above, which is available gratis from All Free Knitting. You might also join one of the several Ravelry illusion knitting groups.

Go For the Gold... Yarn

Next in the "they can make yarn out of anything" category, we have... gold yarn. This Buffalo Gold yarn, brought to us by The Buffalo Wool Co. which specializes in bison yarn, is 3-ply fingering-weight made from 100% pure bison down twisted with pure gold wrapped around silk. This is a special edition yarn that may be gone before this piece on it even posts. Buffalo Wool Co. promises us that this yarn is "ready for scarves and shawls that will become a heirloom in the making". At $175(USD) per 2oz/57g hank, it had better be an heirloom lovely enough to pacify your children for the correspondingly smaller size of their college funds. I'm not tempted to buy this yarn as I look terrible in gray and don't care for the colour combination of gray and gold anyway, but I would like to touch it. I can't help wondering how those glints of gold would feel against the face. Mightn't they be a bit stiff and scratchy?

Knitting Under Duress

This woman is receiving a permanent wave at the beauty salon. This is what the perm process looked like in 1937. It was an arduous matter, and from what I've read even if all went well and the hairdresser didn't misjudge or forget the time and leave her client under the machine so long that her hair got scorched, women went home from the salon with scalps so sore they could hardly bear the prospect of ever combing their hair again. But this woman looks very serene. It must be the fact that she's able to knit meanwhile.

Knit-Perfect Portraiture

Polish artist Izabela Kaczmarek-Szurek, who also goes by the name Formallina, works in various media: painting, illustration, typography design and, of course, extreme knitting. In 2008 she created a calendar using twelve of her Warhol-esque knitted portraits of various famous faces (George Michael, Joan Collins, David Bowie, Paris Hilton) all incorporated into common knitted items (a sweater, a bikini, a cushion, a dog sweater), in ways that on the whole seem a sardonic commentary on the celebrity's individual and collective meaning and value in our culture.


You can check out all twelve of the calendar images here, and visit Formallina's blog to see and read about more of her work. Formallina's grasp of the English language is a little uncertain, but her artwork has a clear and definite universal appeal.

A PSA for Knitters

This is a public service annoucement I can get behind, though it may seem a little overwrought.

Seriously. Don't wreck the Noro. It deserves better.

Martha's Secret

Contrary to what many people assume, Amish women don't dress all in black. It is their bonnets, cloaks, aprons, shoes and stockings that are black, while their dresses are made of vivid solid shades of green, purple, teal, blue, and dark red. Until the early twentieth century, Amish women also wore coloured hand-knit stockings, and for special occasions such as their own weddings, Amish women often knit stockings with fancy striped tops and perhaps also stripes around the feet. It wasn't common knowledge because these stockings were demurely hidden beneath the Amish women's dresses and high-laced black shoes.

The most common pattern featured in these socks are the scallop lace tops as shown in the picture above, with a stripe or wreath or simple geometric pattern below it. Sometimes a date was knitted into the top of the stocking, presumably to commemorate the year of a wedding. My favourite thing about these Amish wedding stockings is that they demonstrate that, as every woman knows, much of the appeal of exquisite lingerie comes from the fact that it is hidden, that the woman who wears it is the only one who knows about it — or, if she is not the only one, she is at least one of a chosen and privileged few. Mainstream North American women have Victoria's Secret, and Amish women had Martha's, Mary's, Sadie's or Hannah's Secret.




Circa 1920, Amish began to buy commercially produced hosiery and ceased to wear coloured stockings altogether. Today, Amish women wear nylons or tights (and never wear socks) and they no longer knit their own stockings. Authentic hand-knit Amish stockings are now antiques, and are consequently rare and likely to cost a collector several hundred dollars per pair. The pair pictured above is for sale for $225(USD).




If you'd like to make yourself a pair of stockings, or what we "English" would call kneesocks, in the Amish style, Nancy Bush offers us a pattern for them on Ravelry. But if you are aiming for truly authentic old Amish stockings, I will tell you that according to close friend of mine who is a Mennonite and whom I had vet this post for accuracy, Amish women would never wear anything in this vivid shade of red. Dark red or hot pink would be acceptable, but never this bright "whore red".