Too Cool Stools

If you like the look of knitted furniture, you might like to take a look at the work of Claire-Anne O'Brien, an Irish textile designer who lives and works in London, and whose furniture designs are basically useable knitted sculptures the visual interest of which will outstrip any couch you could possibly buy.




Of course, as an avid knitter, I'm trying to figure out how they could be replicated. I don't think the average hand-knitter could make an exact copy of these pieces at home because they're at least partly machinery made, but you could probably achieve something along these lines with pre-made furniture legs, a sturdy piece of plywood, and padding. Just be prepared to knit many metres of knitted tubes, because it'll take a lot to create that interlaced effect. If it's too complicated and you don't see your way to laying out, say, €480.00 plus shipping for a Claire-Anne O'Brien stool, you could always stick to making a pouf.

Knitting Imitates Life Forms

If the handcrafted bouquets I posted about yesterday weren't realistic enough for your taste, you might like to check out the work of American artist Tatyana Yanishevsky, whose specializes in knitting and crocheting replicas of items from the natural world. The hibiscus above is one of the pieces from her stunning Knit Garden exhibit.





Yanishevsky's other collections are well worth a look too. Above is the "Cavernous Rage" piece from the Rupture collection of exploding anthers. This exploded anther has an inner red and blue glow that can be switched on and off with a pull cord.

Yanashevsky's other collections are the Human exhibit, which features a knitted heart and lungs rigged with a repeat cycle timer that makes them inflate and deflate, and All Hung Up (aquatic life forms) and Spikes and Spheres (what it says on the tin).

Say It With Knitted Flowers

If you're a crafty bride, or love one who appreciates handmade things and could use some help with her wedding preparations, one DIY wedding planning option is to knit bouquets for the bride and bridesmaids instead of buying fresh floral bouquets. It will cost less, and a yarn bouquet is not only guaranteed not to wilt while the bridal pair are pledging their eternal love, but can be kept as long as desired. Not to rain on anyone's parade, but realistically the odds are the bouquet will last longer than the marriage, like a cross-stitch piece I saw at Value Village last year that depicted pink roses and ribbons and blue birds and featured the words, "James and Amy, United in Love, August 16, 2003". Do you suppose James and Amy got tired of the cross-stitch or that they are no longer united in love? The lesson learned here is that cross-stitch projects, like tattoos, should never include names.

Two good sources for patterns are Lesley Stanfield's 100 Flowers to Knit & Crochet: A Collection of Beautiful Blooms for Embellishing Garments, Accessories, and More and Nicky Epstein's Knitted Flowers and Crocheted Flowers. The knitted tulips above were made by Ravelry user sehepworth, employing a pattern from Lesley Stanfield's book.





The Stanfield and Epstein books offer patterns for individual flowers, such as this morning glory, lavender, and rose, and some aren't shown with stems. To make a bouquet you'll have to make and attach stems (which is just a matter of running florist's wire into some I-cord) and envision your own arrangement and colourway.





I must admit that when researching this post, the best yarn bouquets I came across were all crocheted. Crochet seems to lend itself to floral designs better than knitting does — the knitted flowers I found tended to look rather lumpy and shapeless. If you crochet at all, you might want to go with a crocheted bouquet, or mix the two techniques, as did the maker of the tulips pictured at the top of this post (the leaves are crocheted). The red crocheted roses above were made by Etsy vendor Suili, the calla lily bouquet was made from a pattern from Epstein's Crocheted Flowers, the crocheted pink rose bouquet is a Red Heart pattern, and the crocheted carnations were made by the blogger at Sue's Favourite Things.

I wouldn't toss such a bouquet to your single female guests, though. Women who don't care one bit about getting married might not be so blasé about the chance to score a handmade floral arrangement, and the resulting melee might be a bit unsightly.

Gran Knits

Gran, from the 1983 British stop motion animated series Gran, invents a new kind of central heating.

Yarn Bowling

Since I began researching and writing for this blog, I've been seeing and reading about yarn bowls, those little slotted ceramic bowls that are designed to hold and dispense your yarn while you knit. Many of those for sale are handmade, and very lovely, desirable objects in their own right, but I doubt I'll ever be buying one for myself. Granted, I haven't tried using one, and perhaps they have attributes I'm not aware of (they're supposed to prevent the ball from tangling and rolling), but I can't see how they'd be practical for me. Most of my knitting is done on the TTC or in bed during my evenings in while I watch TV (I watch TV as an excuse to knit), and in either of those scenarios there's no available surface on which I could safely place a yarn bowl. Yes, my yarn balls do tend to roll onto the floor, but I'd rather pick up a ball of yarn and dust it off than weep bitter tears at the sight of a shattered handmade stoneware bowl... and then pick up the ball of yarn and dust it off. Then there's the fact that those round bowls will only hold a ball of yarn, not an elongated skein, and I don't bother winding new skeins of yarn into balls unless there's some reason it's absolutely necessary.

Ultimately, they're just too frivolous for me, the kind of thing my grandmother, who kept a house and a farm, raised her five children (and a lot of poultry), and knitted many an item during the Depression, all with the aid of a wood-burning stove, oil lamps, an outdoor water pump, and an outhouse, would have called "a pack of silliness". But then let it be said that Grandma Swan never thought it mattered how things looked as long as one was clean, neat, and mended, and was always one to patch the seat of her decades-old housedresses until the end of her days in 1993, so I try not to let her rock-bottom brand of practicality influence me too much. Need is too nebulous a construct to base one's purchasing decision on; I decide whether to buy things based on how much I'll use and enjoy them. So I would buy a yarn bowl if I really thought it would enhance the way I knit, but since it probably won't, I'll have to subvert my handmade stoneware lust into buying some tableware or something.

If you think you're the type of knitter a yarn bowl will work for, let me indulge in a little vicarious stoneware fun by showing you some pretty ones. The whimsical birdie stoneware bowl pictured above is from Uncommon Goods.





It may just be my love of turquoise talking, but this yarn bowl from Etsy vendor OCPottery is a feast for the eyes.





The Mud Place offers yarn bowls with pertinent text incorporated into the design — they also have "Purl" and "Knit" bowls.





If the words in the yarn bowls above are too generic for you, you can have a yarn bowl custom made and ask to have your name incorporated into the design, as Little Wren Pottery does for its customers.





As the owner of a white cat with a yarn fetish, I find this cat yarn bowl from Etsy vendor Heidi very funny if slightly disturbing.

A Pretty Plait

I love this braided scarf concept. It looks great, it'll be reversible, it won't come undone or need readjusting, it's a good way to showcase a beautiful hand-dyed yarn, and it'll be very warm. The pictures here do a great job of showing you how to make such a scarf, though I'd knit the three parts of the plait up one at a time using a set of double-pointed needles or the magic loop method, leaving the ones I'd done on a holder, rather than using a circular knitting tool as in these pictures.

I know some knitters will want more explicit directions, so I searched for a pattern, but was unable to find one as good as this. Most of the braided scarf patterns I found just sewed the braid together at the end, which doesn't look nearly as good as knitting them together. If you can find a pattern like this, flip me the link via email or in the comments and I'll add it to the post.

May Day Knitting

For a special May Day post, instead of pointing you towards knitting your own maypole, or even knitting your own maypole and surrounding it with tiny knitted mice, I thought I'd do a post about half a dozen of the most pleasing floral-themed knitting patterns I could find in a quick Ravelry search and we could just all consider it a May Day post because of the whole May flowers and maying tradition thing. Sound good?

Fine then, just humour me.





This pullover is the Cottage Garden pattern by Cheryl Burke, and is a Twist Collective pattern from Fall 2009. The floral yoke pattern is probably more effective when done in a higher contrast pairing of colours as some of the other sample pictures on its Ravelry page show, but I chose this picture because of a personal weakness for a turquoise and spring green colour combo.





The Sylvi jacket is a Twist Collective Winter 2008 pattern by Mari Muinonen. The lines are clean and simple and the detail on the back is just stunning. I've added this to my favourites on Ravelry, which means I am seriously considering making it at some point. I would probably not make it in red though. I love red, and the red sample looks great, but this particular pattern made in red would entail too many Little Red Riding Hood jokes.





This Floral Cushion pattern is from the Debbie Bliss Knitting Magazine Spring/Summer 2011 issue. Simple yet striking.





This is the Dahlia Cardigan from Interweave Knits, Fall 2011. I'm not generally a fan of the wrap/draped front cardigan style but this one is well done (or could be easily made with a button front), and that back detail is just beyond exquisite.





This is the Thistle shawl, designed by The Needle Lady. I'd make it as a throw rather than a shawl, because something this beautiful deserves to be out in plain sight in the living room all the time rather than folded away in a dresser drawer for much of the year.





The Bloomin' sock pattern, by Jeannie Cartmel. They're pretty, the pattern is a free download, and as a bonus whenever you're trying to find them you can ask those you live with if they've seen your bloomin' socks.