Knitters Say the Darndest Things

I'd suggest that you play a drinking game when watching this video and take one swallow of an alcoholic beverage for every thing this knitter says that you've said before, but I wouldn't want you to get too drunk to knit.

Now Your Off-the-Wall Knitted Efforts Can Go on the Wall

It can require some doing to find some attractive art work to hang on your walls. Original art is very expensive, and inexpensive prints and posters can look chintzy. It's one of those Martha Stewart-type decorating rules that framed personal photos should not go on the walls but should sit on the furniture, and I agree it's a rule that upgrades one's décor, because family photos almost never look really artistic.

But your walls needn't remain bare until you can afford original artwork. One way to go is to expand your ideas as to what constitutes art, because you can hang up anything you like so long as you find it interesting and attractive. The question to ask yourself is, simply, "Do I really enjoy looking at this?" In my front entrance way, I've hung up a wooden checkerboard that my father (a very talented and award-winning woodworker) made for me. A friend of mine has an antique post office window hanging over the couch in her living room, and I've heard of people mounting a large tree branch over their dining room table (they decorate it with lights at Christmas), or mounting and framing collections of small items such as buttons, or making collages out of personal momentoes.

Another option is to make your own art, and don't think that you have to be an accomplished painter, sketch artist, or photographer for this to be an option. If you can make anything beautiful that can conceivably be hung on the wall, go for it. I have a little stained glass butterfly hanging over the doorway in my bathroom, and I'm always surprised by the number of my guests who come out of the bathroom and immediately comment on it. In my front hallway, across from the checkerboard, I have hanging a framed counted cross-stitch of a magnolia that I made. It has approximately 29,000 stitches in it and took me two and a half years to stitch, so I had it professionally framed and hung it by the front door so I could see it every damn day of my life and think, "That's right. TWENTY-NINE THOUSAND STITCHES."

People have been framing needlework such as embroidery and needlepoint for many years, and now crocheting and knitting are getting into the picture. I ran across the picture above on the net a few weeks ago, and was very impressed. Finally, someone found a contemporary use for doilies! The collection looked so sharp I made a mental note to myself to find some comparable shots of framed knitting and write a post about it.





There were fewer examples of framed knitting on the net. Knitting tends to be less purely decorative than doilies are, so it might take a little more imagination to produce a decorative knitting piece, but it can be done. The blogger at Crafty Yuppie made this piece for an art show at work (and had a bit of time convincing her co-workers that knitting could be art), and I thought it quite lovely.





I found this piece, which is about contrasting the colour and texture of the knitting, in the My Mountain Studio shop on Art Fire, and it's striking.

This is a new direction to explore, and I'm sure most knitters could make a beautiful collection of knitted pieces that would suit their homes and become the admiration of all their house guests. You might even have swatches on hand you could hang up by the end of today, or say, a lace scarf that you can't finish because you ran out of yarn, that would be a perfect candidate for framing.

One important factor in knitted art's success is that the pieces should be framed to a professional standard, because a good quality framing job really adds to the aesthetic viability of a piece. I can't do framing myself and professional framing is one of my few extravagances in decorating, but so worth it. Especially when it comes to a piece of needlework that has TWENTY-NINE THOUSAND STITCHES in it.

What to Do When You Have Three Hours, a T-shirt, and a Skein of Yarn on Hand

Ute Rehner, a Facebook user and a member of the Heute Strick Ich Faceboook community page, decided one afternoon that she needed something to wear for an evening appointment. She took a plain charcoal gray jersey top and a single skein of Rowan Kidsilk Haze Glamour, and set to work, knitting a collar and cuffs, cutting away part of the original neckline and sleeves from her shirt, and then pinning and stitching the knitted ones in place, all in the space of three hours. The result looks wonderful — you can see more pictures and Rehner's narrative on here.

This is definitely a great idea for making a lovely little top that can be worn almost anywhere, will flatter most women, and that isn't going to take much time or money. But if I try it, I'll be allowing myself more than three hours of leeway for the job. I have never found that knitting and tight deadlines marry well.

Today's Knitting is Yesterday's News

If you're still one of those who indulge in the delightfully archaic practice of reading the newspaper on actual newspaper, or if your local newspapers are so desperate to entice you to do so that they leave freebies on your front porch, you may be wondering what to do with the paper once you've read it. Well, if you're a knitter, you can turn it into yarn and knit things with it. Back in 2007, Design Academy Eindhoven student Greetje van Tiem, from the academy's Man and Leisure department, presented a graduation show project that involved old newspapers into yarn that can be woven into carpets, curtains and upholstery. Accordng to van Tiem, each sheet of newspaper yields twenty yards of yarn.





Italian artist Ivano Vitali, who is interested in zero waste art and was experimenting with tapestries made of backdated newspapers, plastic bags, eggshells and aluminum foil nearly forty years ago, now works almost exclusively in recycled newsprint.





Vitali makes not only art installation, but newspaper garments that are not only quite attractive but even wearable. He produces different colours in his garment by carefully pre-sorting the newspapers before producing the yarn. And these are remarkably well-cut styles, but I can't help wondering what would happen if one got caught in the rain in newsprint knitwear. Mightn't it disintegrate completely?





I don't think for instance, that I'd have the nerve to go swimming in this Ivano Vitali-made bikini.

If you'd like to give knitting with newsprint a try, you might begin by checking out this Craftster tutorial on how to make newspaper yarn.

Why a Knitter Shouldn't Marry a Rollerskater

Franklin Habit of The Panopticon brings us an animated drama showing us what would happen if Queen Elizabeth, who is a knitter, were married to a roller-skating Albert Einstein.

Knitting Fables

I've previously done a "knitting narratives post", for which I wrote fictional captions for various photos of knitting weirdness. It did quite well pageview count-wise, and so I have decided to start doing these knitting fable posts fairly regularly, say, twice a month. This may be my frustration over not getting to my novel-in-progress talking, and probably no one finds my captions as hilarious as I do, but I find them easy and a lot of fun to write. With knitwear this bizarre, the jokes write themselves.

Many of the pictures and captions below have already appeared on this blogs's Facebook page, but there are a couple of new ones. From now on I'll try to be sure that at least half the entries are new.





Chantal has always really gotten off on static cling: the flyaway hair, the crackly sounds, the slight electric charge, the feeling that her undies might be showing. She was sure she couldn't be the only person who felt that way, and her newest knitwear creation was designed to give the wearer that fresh-out-of-the-dryer, forgot-the-fabric-softener feeling.





Lola thought her knitted outfit needed just a little something more to jazz it up a bit, so she tied a legwarmer around her leg just above the knee. There, she thought, that was just what it wanted. Like her mother always said, a classic look does require a touch of the unexpected if it's not to look staid and boring.





Ginevra thought she'd come up with the perfect design for an après-ski outfit: a tensor bandage or cast from any ski injuries would fit right underneath, if she spilled a drink the mark would just blend in, and it complemented her husband's lederhosen.





Tarquin is a complicated man, and no one understands him but his knitwear designer, Bikram yoga instructor, and shadow puppet coach.





Dr. Void was proud of the way her knitting project had turned out. She'd made a sweater that looked polished and professional and that could double as a Rorschach inkblot test for her patients in her psychiatry practice.





Whenever one of the kids woke up crying in the night, Grace always put on her special face mask and Fred quickly donned his Insane Gopher Man costume before they went to their child's room. As they told their friends at Curling Club, one of the parenting how-to books they'd read had said that they could help their children lose their fear of nightmares by making reality even more terrifying.





Yvonne had hoped her new dress would do double duty for her position as High Priestess of Loki and for her job as a claims adjuster, but then the Bishop of her diocese told her The Book of Loki forbid the use of hot pink in ceremonial robes for any priestess above the rank of Semi-Exalted. These weekend role playing games could certainly get exacting but then, as Yvonne reminded herself, that was what she liked about them.





Morticia hoped her new spring dress wasn't too young or bright or pretty for her. Gomez had been enthralled and Thing had given her a thumb up, so she decided it would do.





Per her therapist's instructions, Suzette dutifully swathed herself in fabric from her mother's sewing room and afghans from the rec room couch, sat in the woods behind her family's house, and said to herself, "I am a princess. I am a princess. I am a princess," for two hours every day. But after two weeks, when her self-esteem didn't seem to be improving, she began to think her therapist was full of it. Maybe, Suzette thought, the way to feel better about herself was to dump her douchebag boyfriend, train to run a marathon, and begin working towards the career in medical research that she'd always wanted.





Annabella had learned years ago that any stitch gauge snafu could be compensated for if she just threw enough attitude and the right shades into the mix.





When Teoma found she didn't have the goods for slalom kayaking or roller sports, she decided the brand new Olympic sport of rope climbing and knitting would be her best bet of taking home the gold.





Twin sisters Aurora and Dawn had a knitting time ritual: Aurora would strum her ukelele while Dawn sang twelfth century chantefables and knitted. Unfortunately Dawn had only turned out ugly afghans so far, and Aurora was considering suggesting that they switch roles, but the subject had to be approached with care. Aurora remembered well what had happened the time she wanted to be the one who wore the fascinator.

If You've Ever Felt Like Mending a Sweater

Has your favourite wool sweater developed holes? One way to mend the hole, or to embellish a plain sweater, is to needle felt patches over the holes with a small amount of roving and a felting needle. Erica at the blog Honestly WTF has written a tutorial explaining how to make heart-shaped patches for your sweater elbows.






If you want to see a video of the felting patch technique, the one above demonstrates it well. You'll have the option of making the patches in different simple shapes, such as those found in cookie cutters (stars, hearts, trees, Easter chicks or eggs), or if you're feeling really artistic, in more complex creations of your own design: birds, insects, flowers, text, or whatever you like. If you wish to simply mend your sweater unobtrusively, you can try to find roving in a very similar colour, or if that's not possible, mend the sweater with the closest colour of roving you can find and then dye the whole item a new colour.

There are considerations to keep in mind. Felting won't work with synthetic fibres or with superwash wool. To be a candidate for felt patches, your sweater must be natural, non-superwash woolly fibres such as sheep's wool, alpaca, angora, or cashmere. The felt patch, while it may look unobtrusive, will have a very different texture from the rest of the sweater, so you'll have to ask yourself if you'll be okay with that or if you'll be constantly fingering that stiff, lumpy little patch. Needle felting involves fast, forceful stabbing motions within inches of your fingers, and you're bound to stick yourself with the barbed needle at some point in the process, and it will hurt a lot. Felting isn't a quick process, either — darning is faster. The video above, as you can see, isn't real time.

I've never used felt patches to mend my sweaters. I do mend my clothes whenever I can, but I mend knitted items by darning them with the same, or a very similar, colour. And generally my rule is that mending has to be invisible, or at least unobtrusive, or the item goes out. I'm really not into the grunge/Dickensian urchin look. I must admit though that those heart-shaped elbow patches would be adorable on a little kid's sweater, so there might just be some felt patching in my future.