Yarnable Wednesday

Left: Image by Anya Hynynen, found on Loveology / Right: Photograph by Kirstie van Noort

Yarnable Wednesday is my fav! Here are some favorite finds from this week:

Lynn Garrett makes chunky knits for your furniture! She sells some terrific chair leg-warmers at her Etsy shop, Biscuit Scout.

Knitt Purr makes incredibly small things by knitting on pins. Yes. Pins. Dolls aren't entirely my thing, but boy do I respect that craftsmanship!

Needle Noodles sells patterns to crochet just about anything on their Etsy shop.

1. Sushi 2. Ring Box 3. Pork Chop Sandwich 4. Candy!

And finally, this dress by Jemma Sykes. Oh. My. Goodness. Jemma designed and knitted this phenomenal dress for Butcher Couture, a company specializing in eco-couture. This piece is made of naturally-dyed 100% wool and was worn by Maria Mena on the cover of her album  "Cause and Effect". It was auctioned off to support the Breast Cancer Campaign. Wow. This dress has a longer resume than I do.

Thank you to ArtisicThings for the images. See more about this dress there.

Yarnable Wednesday

I just made up my own word. Wednesdays will be dedicated to all things knitted, chrocheted, and yarned. I have totally fallen in love with the giant knit: knitting together smaller knitted strands to make monstrous and comfy pieces. With that in mind, have you seen these knit stools by Claire Anne O'Brien?

Claire is a textile designer who specializes in knitting. She is originally from Ireland (hence all the lambswool and sheeps wool). She graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2010 with a Masters in Textiles. She also did a Designer Meets Artisan project with Unesco in 2009, where she collaborated with the local women of  Ladakh in the Himalayas, working with them to create knitted products they now make and sell on tourist trekking routes in the region. She makes fantastic furniture and gives back!

Yarn Mandalas

Crossroads by Jay Mohler

Jay Mohler's Ojos de Dios Yarn Mandalas are so nice I had to share. Visit his Etsy shop at Jaysmandalas.

Finding the Way by Jay Mohler

Open Mind Open Heart by Jay Mohler

Colorful Life by Jay Mohler

Creative Candy: Camilo Rojas & David Garcia

While doing my usual searching and pinning through the interwebs, I came across this simple and powerful window installation for Macy's, created by designer and graphic artist Juan Camilo Rojas and David Garcia. Having done a few window displays where time was of the essence, I am always blown away by work that is so simple yet creates a huge impact. The pair decided this project was a terrific time to work with typography. As Juan writes about the project, "This year I have worked on a lot of typography projects, trying to take them out of a display or a sketch book into a 3D level using different materials."

The pair used 3,000 yards of yarn and pins. For more fantastic projects by Juan Camilo Rojas, visit his design site, Create. His work with cola-rusted nails was also one of my favorites.

Chunky Knit Tee Scarf

You can buy a recycled tee scarf at my Etsy shop.

This project started because I've been wanting to satisfy my chunky knit fix. There's all sorts of projects out there on repurposing t-shirts into fabulous scarves, so I thought I'd give it a try. A free t-shirt is like yesterday's business card, so they are not hard to come by. Besides, is it really necessary to keep an ill-fitting article of clothing that commemorates the junior banquet of your high school Latin Club? yes, I was a geek. Probably not. Seeing as I love to make things for free, I set out to deconstruct and reconstruct a few t-shirts by knitting them into an item I can actually use now. Here's how to do it:

Start with a few t-shirts you really shouldn't own anymore:

I used two large t-shirts. Cut them into 1 1/2 in. strips. I chose to cut only the shirt below the arm-holes, and not to use pieces with the applique on them.

do you see me?

Then sew all those strips together. It doesn't matter which sides you sew together, just that you end up with one long strip of cut t-shirt. This is your "yarn".

Now cast on 6 stitches. I used cable cast on. I love using my large wooden needles.

Then knit one side, purl the other as you would an ordinary scarf until you have no more "yarn". If you do not know how to knit, there are plenty of sites and videos on the web to learn. Here's a video I found that covers the basics.

You'll want to block the scarf, too. Lay it flat on an ironing board and iron it flat. Let it sit until it cools down.

To close this scarf, I chose a pin I'd recently gotten at a fun clothing store named GaGa in Iceland.

so cute!!

Next I might try a tie-dyed number, or shirts with patterns, which will give the scarf a nice depth.

Yarn Shop, Reykjavik

One of the reasons I love my husband still (we are on year #4!) is how creative he is, even though his work is mostly engineering and math-related. I'm quite sure that most of his co-workers have no clue that he collects art, has a huge music collection, and that he is one of the most fascinating photographers I know.

When we first met we took a tiny trip to London and he showed me how he used a crazy Lomo camera to take photos on a roll of film, reloaded the roll, and shot another set of crazy pictures on top of those with no idea how they would turn out. The result was like ceramics: you're never quite sure what you'll get when you take it from the kiln, but now and then you are surprised by something bloody brilliant.

The musician Lay Low, photographed by Jason Gordon, 2011

Lately he's been using a specially-made teleidoscope and a cheap digital camera to create some stunning images of our trip and some of the artists playing at the festival. He took these images when we were casually exploring a yarn shop in Reykjavik.

It is amazing how something so simple...

can become something so amazing...

I am urging him to create a blog of his own, and I will probably be digging up his old prints to do it. It will be fun to go digging!

Creative Candy: KNITTA PLEASE

Since I've caught the knitting bug, I thought it might be a great idea to mention Guerilla Knitting. Also known as "knit graffiti", "yarn bombing", or "yarnstorming". The idea is credited to a group called Knitta Please, which began in Austin, Texas in 2005. However, if you search, you will find there are tons of knit graffiti artists out there, all knitting in the most unusual places.

The founder of Knitta Please and the movement itself, Magda Sayeg, is probably the most famous of them. She continues to inspire me with her touches of "cozy".

She has knitted sign posts, parking meters, concrete barriers, highway signs, and chess pieces:

One of my favorite projects of hers was this knitted/crocheted bus in Mexico City:

She was also asked to cover the AC ductwork at Etsy's headquarters and knit 318 fence posts under the Williamsburg Bridge, as commissioned by the North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition (NBart):

I was also blown away by this UK-based group, Knit the City:

These hilarious, masked knitters explain "our mission remains the same: to yarnstorm until we can yarnstorm no more or until the needles and hooks are pried from our cold dead hands. Or until it's time for a tea break." Unlike Magda, they wish to remain anonymous. Most likely because not everyone agrees with giant knitted squids placed on the founding fathers of Biology. (But he looks so cute, don't you think?)

The "why" of this artform, like all art, varies from project to project, person to person.  But anytime we can add a little "warm and fuzzy" delight to this harsh world, I absolutely welcome it. It is a fun and interesting challenge: what would you knit if you could? Now why not try to?

Magda Sayeg