So You Think You Can Knit....

Who will win the giant needle, and who will go home in despair and start crocheting? Check out the drama, the joy, and the heartbreak that is the finale of So You Think You Can Knit.

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

Knitting a Wig to Flip

For today's post I've selected eleven examples of yarn wigs for your inspiration and entertainment. They're not something one can wear in daily life, obviously, but they'd form a pretty funny part of a costume for Halloween or some kind of fancy dress event, and might even make a good gift for a cancer patient who has the right sense of humour (pro tip: check with the person in advance). The above is the Princess Leia Wig, and the pattern is available for $7.95(USD). You can also make a Leia wig for your baby.

If you've always been more of a Trekkie than a Star Wars type, you can make a Spock wig. The pattern is available for free.

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be pattern for this Elvis wig, and the website on which it originally appeared is down, but perhaps you can make a replica using the photo as your guide. There is another Elvis wig pattern available for free on Ravelry but it's pretty... over the top. Literally.

If you're into Revolutionary War re-enactments, this might be perfect for turning you into a British naval captain. The pattern is available for free on the blog Bel far niente.

If you've got a Thing 1 and possibly also a Thing 2 at home, you can have lots of good fun that is funny by making these wigs for them. The pattern is available for $5(USD.)

This Hallowig pattern is available for free on Knitty and seems to have been widely used — there are loads of them depicted on the internet. They remind me of the hair on the old-style girl character Lego pieces from thirty or more years ago.

I can't decide whether crocheting this Cabbage Patch Kid wig would be a demonstration of good or bad parenting, but you can buy the pattern for $5.99(USD) and find out for yourself.

The next time you feel like sailing the seven seas and doing some plundering and pillaging, you'll have the headgear for it! This Viking hat and wig is a free pattern.

I might just have to make this Desperate Hausfrau wig myself and put it with the rest of my landlady costume (bifocals, shapeless housedress, stockings in rolls around my ankles, scuzzy slippers, eight mangy cats and a nasty-tempered, hyper little dog) in order to scare the back rent out of my tenant. This wig design is a free pattern from Knitty.

If the curler do above doesn't appeal, you can also be another kind of desperate housewife, Marge Simpson. This pattern is available for free.

Of course I can't do a really comprehensive wig post unless I include an example of a merkin, which is a wig for um, down there. Pretty Prudent posted this one as an April Fool's joke. My hat (or wig as the case might be) is off to them for actually getting someone to model it. And staging it with a wine glass was a classy touch, don't you think? There's no pattern available, but if you're determined to go there.... it shouldn't be too hard to copy.

A Brainwave of a Design

Artists Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet, and a PhD candidate and MTG researcher, Sebastian Mealla, all based in Barcelona, have come up with a unique design concept for knitwear: neuro knitting. They make a computer recording of a person's brainwaves by having him or her wear an EEG headset for about ten minutes, translate the brainwaves into a graph using software, and then use the graph as a pattern for a scarf made on an open hardware knitting machine. You can see one of the resulting scarves in the picture above, modelled by Mealla.






You can see the neuro knitting production process in action by viewing the video above and read more about the project here. Guljajeva, Canet, and Mealla have only made two scarves so far but have received a lot of requests for personalized scarves and plan to make bespoke neuro knits for sale at £180 each. The scarves do seem like they might be the perfect Christmas or birthday gift for, say, a neurology researcher or EEG technician.

Miss Havisham's Nightgown and Other Knitting Fables

When people asked Marta where she came up with such design concepts, she just smiled and said that like all true artists, her sources of inspiration were many and varied: tangled present ribbons after present opening on Christmas morning; yarn after her cat had played with it; the few childhood Slinkys she had that always immediately got tangled; her hair if she forgot to use conditioner in the shower....

Elaine felt knitting should be pure art, above such paltry considerations as darning in ends or sewing side seams.





After Abby switched her major from English literature to clothing design, she put her literary studies to good use by using them as a source of inspiration, such as in her latest effort, which she called "Miss Havisham's Nightgown".

Sometimes Robin and her boyfriend John liked to indulge themselves in a little Robin Hood and Little John role play in a nearby forest. John had made them a rustic trailer as shelter for their time in the woods and Robin had made knitted green coats and feathered hats and bought tights for both of them. They'd thought their friend Marian, who was a history major and who loved Ren Faires, might like to join them for some swordplay, but when they asked she'd only sniffed and said their props weren't period accurate.





Jordan now knew that his high school counsellor had been full of it. After all, Jordan had carried out that guidance counsellor's advice to the letter. He'd followed his heart, found work he loved, and given his creative impulses free rein, and he was still bowed down by existential angst.





Portia had not been sure what one wore to compete in the Abominable Snowpeople's "Snow Princess" competition, but she really hoped she had come up with something appropriate, because it was her understanding that unsatisfactory Snow Princess contestants got eaten for breakfast, and she had some uneasy suspicions about what exactly was entailed in the winner's "prize".





Dominique was having one of those days when she just couldn't wait to show off her latest knitting project, her latest crochet project, her latest beading project, and the latest hair and makeup techniques she'd learned, all at once. Hey, it wasn't her fault she was so multi-talented.

Bianca was on a one-women mission to destroy all those old crocheting stereotypes. She was determined to show everyone that granny squares could be bad ass.

Shelley and Brian just had one of "those" marriages and they couldn't bear to be apart. Their wedding song was "Every Breath You Take" and they'd put a "love toilet" on their wedding registry (although they hadn't gotten one and had had to save up for one themselves). They liked to wear matching outfits, but that didn't seem to bring them close enough, so Shelley made them a real togetherness outfit out of pieces from several of their old sweaters.

"I have devised a strategy to make you take me back to the animal shelter so I can be adopted by someone who respects my dignity or at least isn't completely insane. It's called 'Operation Howl'."

Stripes and Swagger: a Selection of Knitting Patterns from 1930-1939

Well, here we are at the fourth post in my twentieth century knitting pattern series (you can see the other posts in the series here), which features a selection of knitwear designs dating from 1930 to 1939. I have been looking forward to doing this particular post for weeks. The thirties are my favourite decade of the twentieth century in terms of clothing fashion because the clothes were not only wearable in the modern sense but flattering while still holding to a certain old school sartorial standard, and the result is ever so stylish. In the twenties the ideal figure for women was boyish and women's clothing tended to be more than a little on the shapeless side; in the thirties the Jazz babies grew up and took to well-tailored womanly styles that looked better on most women. (I mean, have you seen Gosford Park? All those bias-cut evening gowns are to die for. If I may say that about a murder mystery.) This post was also made more rewarding to write because it is the first one in the Twentieth Century series for which I could finally find and include authentic menswear patterns.

All that aside, let's get started and have a look at the ten 1930s patterns I've selected.

This is the Swagger Scarf, which has definite Art Deco look to it. It's a free pattern and is all in garter stitch so it's a straightforward pattern to knit.






This is the cute and striking Tennis Blouse pattern in both its original form and in a modern version. It's a free pattern.

This is Tennis Jumper pattern, which again reflects the prevalence of the the Art Deco aesthetic during the thirties. I'm terribly sorry for the poor quality of this photo. I liked the sharply graphic design so much I wanted to include it, though I know poor visuals like this make it difficult for many people to see the appeal. Perhaps one of you will knit this design and send me a photo of yourself modelling it so I can add it to the post. This pattern originally appeared in The Western Mail (which was an Australian newspaper) on December 10, 1931, and is a free pattern. I do wish newspapers had kept up the practice of including free patterns up until the rise of the internet and Ravelry, especially if they were as nice as this one.

This striped sweater was printed in The Australian Women's Weekly, on July 29, 1933, and is a free pattern. It was common for thirties-era sweaters to be what we'd call a cropped length now, so if you want to make any of these patterns you will probably want to lengthen them. This one will look better lengthened because the extra inches down below will balance out the stripes on the top.

This lace evening gown is the Alora pattern. A number of Ravelry members who are making it appear to be making it for their wedding gowns or bridesmaid dresses. It appeared in the Minerva Style Book, Volume 33 in 1934. This pattern is available for free, but you can also buy the book it's in from Iva Rose Vintage Reproductions for $16.95. The Minerva pattern books are all very stylish, which is probably to be expected given that they became part of the Condé Nast publishing group and then morphed into the original Vogue Knitting. If you love thirties knitwear fashions, I recommend a browse through the collection of thirties pattern books on the Iva Rose site.

How modern-looking is this zip front men's cardigan? It looks like it's straight out of knit.wear. It is pretty basic, but I think the good lines and the flap pockets give it some style. This pattern was originally published in Minerva Men's Book, Volume 37, in 1934, and the book is available from Iva Rose Vintage Reproductions for $16.95.

The Starring Stripes pattern appeared in Stitchcraft in November 1936 and is a free pattern. There are so many such smart little short-sleeved top designs in the thirties-era patterns I looked at while researching this post that I could hardly choose among them.

This little girl's striped dress pattern originally appeared in The Australian Women's Weekly, on August 13, 1938, and is a free pattern.

This design is the Bairnswear 561 pattern and it's from the late thirties. It's available from The Vintage Knitting Lady as a photocopy for £1.99 or as a PDF for £1.50.

This Swagger Coat is a Corticelli design and is available on Subversive Femme as a free pattern. I saw other swagger coat patterns while I was researching this post and it seems to have been a recognized style for coats to have a tab fastening at the top of an otherwise buttonless coat. The existence of a Swagger Coat style and the Swagger Scarf above makes me think swaggering must have been a thing in the thirties.

Knit Uncensored

The machine-knit piece above, Knit Uncensored, is a 2005 piece by British textile artist Kelly Jenkins, who likes to play against common knitting stereotypes in her work.

Knit Chatlines is another of her knitted pieces from 2005. Jenkins creates the images for these afghan-sized pieces on a computer, machines knits them, and then hand-embroiders the finishing touches. You can see more of Kelly Jenkins' knitted art here, and see the other works in her portfolio and learn more about Jenkins on her website.

Reliving Those Schoolgirl Suspensions in Suspenders

This is the "Dirndl Plaid Suspender Skirt", designed by Pauline Denham, circa 1965. It's for the woman who wants to recapture those schoolgirl days by wearing a hideously unflattering version of her school uniform. But these are very specific schoolgirl days we're talking about. These are not "prom queen who dated the hot football captain" schoolgirl days, or "brainy school newspaper editor with a cute and witty boyfriend" days, or "wild girl who dated the bad boys and got suspended for smoking pot behind the gym", or even "average girl who dated the usual gamut of boys and in between times had lots of fun with her friends". No, these are "awkward dork girl who was too bashful to make friends, spent the night of every school dance alone in her room crying and writing shitty poetry and eventually succumbed to the overtures of her pervy English teacher until she could no longer hide her pregnancy under the bulkiest of skirts and he got arrested for statutory rape" days.

I really don't know why anyone would want to revisit those memories, but the way to do it is with a qualified counsellor, not with, let alone in, this knitting project. And don't even get me started on the psychological motivation behind that Marcia Brady hairstyle.