knitting, spinning, dyeing, and related fiber arts
photo: John Scarisbrick
photo: John Scarisbrick
Some of the creations of fiber artist Sandra Backlund. Referring to her technique as “heavy wool collage” she fancies herself as a sculpture more than a knitter.
Well, it’s not too hard to figure out why the model looks like that.
When someone is daydreaming instead of paying attention to the talk at hand, it used to be, and sometimes still is said that the person is “wool gathering” . How did that saying come about? Most people don’t require any wool at all to do their fanciful thinking.
Henry Herbert La Thangue - Gathering Wool
The answer is simple enough. When sheep are out in their meadows or even in their stalls, they often rub their sides along fences, trees, bushes, and other upright, stable objects, probably to scratch an itch or just because it feels good. In the days when wool was processed by hand, someone in the family that owned the sheep would have to go into the fields to collect the pieces of wool that rubbed off and stuck to the “scratching post.” Waste not, want not, after all. As this is not a very taxing occupation, it’s likely that the wool gatherer would be thinking about all sorts of things.
http://danceswithwool.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/textile-terms-wool-gathering/
It’s called “microknitting” , and Althea Crome has hit the big time as knitter of Coraline’s tiny sweater and gloves for the movie based on Neil Gaimon’s fantasy novel. Althea is a full sized adult human who knits miniatures. Her work is painstaking and positively amazing! Seeing this video has lit a fire under me to get out there ASAP to see Coraline, unusual for me because I generally wait for the DVD release. Maybe I’ll take my mom…
more about "Miniature Knitter", posted with vodpod
photo: BNPS
Imaginative knitters around the world are turning their skills to creating public art projects out of yarn. There are even plans in the works for a book about the phenomenon. The UK’s Telegraph has an article about this fantastic bus, with information about how this trend got started. I think this is what should be done with all school buses. Does the Partridge Family come with this?
Interesting in participating in a collaborative fiber arts project? Last year, University of Alabama’s Jennifer Marsh created fiber covered gas station. Now, she’s organizing another huge project– a covered tree in Huntsville, Alabama. Participants are asked to make and submit a leaf, using any fiber arts technique. The deadline is March 15, and her site contains all the info you need, including a downloadable entry form and basic instructions. This is a fun opportunity to be part of large scale experiment with people from around the world. Click right here to learn more.
I’m in! Now to plan my creation….
What, you may ask, is Extreme Knitting? Apparently, it’s using gigantic (fence post size) wooden needles and hundreds and hundreds of yarn skeins. Other than creating an art piece, and a very large one at that, there seems to be no other practical use at this time. The leader of this new movement is Rachel John of England, who runs an organization called Extreme Textiles. The following video shows a record breaking knitting feat performed at the Unravel festival in 2006. It runs about 6 minutes. I wonder how much the final product weighs…..
Most representations of knitting in art have been produced from the 18th century on. This painting, by Meister Bertram von Minden, Germany, was done near the end of the 14th century. Titled “The Madonna Knitting Christ’s Seamless Garment”, it represents the Virgin Mary making a tunic in the round, using 4 needles. The tradition of the seamless garment describes a scene at the crucifixion, when the Roman soldiers cast lots to win possession of it, not wishing to tear up such a valuable
item of clothing. Two churches, the cathedral at Trier and the parish church of Argenteuil, claim to have possession of the actual garment. Trier claims that it was brought to them by the Empress Saint Helena, who also is supposed to have found the True Cross. The French believe that theirs was brought there by Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor. Both claims date from the 1100’s.
Most probably, Christ’s clothing was woven, not knitted. But it’s a lovely painting and a lovely thought.
Uh oh. He’s baaack! First in wax at Madame Tussaud’s and now in wool. That’s what I call subversive knitting. Read all about it in Telegraph.uk.
additional thoughts on this issue:
http://danceswithwool.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/a-few-thoughts-about-knitted-hitler/
For me, one of the pleasures of knitting is listening to the quiet click of the needles. It’s a very soothing sound, probably because of childhood memories of lying in bed at night, hearing my mom’s needles clicking away in the living room. This afternoon, an article on the net from the Washington Post caught my eye. Entitled Weaving a Tapestry of Sound, it tells about a Baltimore artist, Laure (pronounced Laura) Drogoul, who also has positive associations with the sounds of knitting.
A few years ago, she became curious about what it would sound like to amplify those sounds, and devised a method to do so. Laure was so pleased with the result that she presented an activity at a music fest, inviting up to 10 knitters at a time to provide what she titled “Orchestral Knitting.”
Fascinating. Here’s the article:
Weaving a Tapestry of Sound – washingtonpost.com
Who woulda thought?
