Knitting News

Textiles to be focus of exhibit in Bay State | Bangor Daily News

Textiles to be focus of exhibit in Bay State
Bangor Daily News - May 30 2006

Those who love textiles and wish to expand their knowledge about them may want to attend the Textile Arts Symposium 2006 on Thursday, June 22, to Sunday, June 25, at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. The event will showcase the museum's extensive textile collection.

More than 15 artists, authors, curators and educators will give lectures and lead tours at the event.

Deborah Pulliam of Castine, who writes for Piecework magazine and is a needlework historian, will give a lecture at the symposium. Her topic will be "Hand Knitting in New England." She will use examples from the museum's holdings and other collections to illustrate her talk. She also will discuss the popularity of Victorian "fancy work." [more]

Military spouses soldier on | NorthJersey.com

Military spouses soldier on
NorthJersey.com - May 29 2006

What was it like during the war, Mom? For women whose husbands served overseas, it all depends on which war.

[...]While she was pregnant, Lee Ottenbreit became involved with a program called Bundles for Britain. "I went down to their embassy and asked, 'What do you need?' and I wound up knitting masks, vests ... gloves with open fingers. ... I couldn't go into service, but I knew I had to help somewhere. So, every night, after putting my son to bed, I would listen to the war news on the radio and knit."[more]

Woolly bully | Time Out New York

Woolly bully [via Free to Stitch Free to Bitch]
Time Out New York - April 20-26 2006

Knitting circles evoke cozy camaraderie over clicking needles. Lately, however, the stitching world has become entangled in a legal imbroglio that’s anything but warm and fuzzy. The trouble started last May when Elissa Meyrich, owner of the Sew Fast Sew Easy shop on West 35th Street (which, in addition to offering supplies and classes, hosts an online forum called Stitch & Bitch Cafe), started to enforce her four-year-old copyright on the term Stitch & Bitch*. “Stitch & Bitch started when students of Sew Fast Sew Easy gathered for Friday evenings of sewing, knitting and crochet fun,” SFSE’s website explains. “No other usage of Stitch & Bitch ever occurred before.” One knitter, however, thinks otherwise: Debbie Stoller, author of Stitch ’N Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook (Workman Publishing). [more]

It's actually a trademark (not copyright) for STITCH & BITCH CAFE (not just Stich & Bitch)

On a High Andean Lake, an Island of the Incas | New York Times

On a High Andean Lake, an Island of the Incas [with slide show]
New York Times - April 9 2006

The bantam motor coughs, and our boat creeps through green water. A couple of men sporting the floppy wool stocking cap called a chuyo are perched in the rear chewing coca. Women cooing in Quechua tent little ones beneath long black shawls, and we crane our necks to peek inside their secret world.
My traveling companion, Nita, and I are heading for Taquile, a small two-and-a-half-mile-high island on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca, and once a prized possession of the Incas. The empire seized the island in the 15th century, and inhabitants still speak its tongue, Quechua, in addition to Spanish. For the roughly 2,000 residents, spinning yarn and weaving intricate patterns thousands of years old are as important to everyday life as farming and cooking. Running water and electricity are scarce, the only transportation is by foot, and tranquillity abounds. [more]

From the spinning wheel | The Monitor

From the spinning wheel
The Monitor - March 12 2006

Analucia Perdomo skillfully fed strands of wool into the flyer of the spinning wheel, stepping on a pedal to spin the material into yarn and wrap it around a bobbin.
"The origin is thought to be in China," said Perdomo, 19. "Mom, can you give me some more wool?"
Her mother, Elizabeth Perdomo, pulled a bundle of yarn out of a straw basket and handed it to her, strands of silky, cushiony-soft material that she draped across her lap like Spanish moss. Analucia, her mother, and her two sisters are doing their part to keep an ancient craft alive. They had just spent the past three weekends doing demonstrations at various places around the Rio Grande Valley, dressing up in costumes of various cultures and time periods.
"We do the same thing but change the costume," said Elizabeth. "‘OK, girls, this weekend we’re Renaissance. This weekend we’re Spanish settlers. This weekend we’re pioneers.’" [more]

Knit one, bless two: Through shawl ministry, knitters reach out to those in need of comfort | The News Journal

Knit one, bless two: Through shawl ministry, knitters reach out to those in need of comfort
The News Journal - March 11 2006

Marty Pendleton began knitting when she was a child. World War II was being fought and her mother knit many hats, socks and lap robes for the Red Cross.
Pendleton's third-grade teacher encouraged her students to knit six-by-six-inch squares that were sewn together for lap robes for wounded servicemen.
"Because I always saw my mother knitting, I decided I wanted to keep on knitting," Pendleton said. During Lent, she's pouring her knitting prowess into the Prayer Shawl Ministry at Park Avenue Baptist Church. [more]

The art of knit and crochet on display at the Toledo History Center | Newport News Times

The art of knit and crochet on display at the Toledo History Center
Newport News Times - FEbruary 17 2006

Knitted and crocheted items made or collected by local people are being featured in a display at the Toledo History Center in February. Included are afghans, tablecloths, bedspreads, doilies, sweaters, socks and other clothing items.
Knitter and spinner Ann Hendrickson of Toledo has several items on display made of yarn she has spun. She creates subtle colorations by spinning with fibers dyed prior to being spun into yarn. One of her spinning wheels, a Pipy wheel from New Zealand is included in the display.
"It spins very well," she says of this wheel. "I often take it when I am spinning away from home, at the fair and other events." [more]

Knitting is not just for women -- and never was | Anchorage Daily News

Knitting is not just for women -- and never was
Anchorage Daily News - February 14 2006

When you think of someone knitting, what image comes to mind? Is it one of a sweet, little old granny rocking back and forth in her wooden rocker while she deftly plies the yarn into something wonderful to wear? Do you see young athletic teens knitting and talking about yarn brands? Teenage boys, I mean.
Would it surprise you to learn that their ski coach is also teaching them to knit? And the coach is a guy! And it's happening right here in Anchorage. Obviously, knitting isn't just for girls.
Come Feb. 24, John Angst, the Dimond High ski coach, will be giving the fine points of knit and purl to local guys age 14 and older at a Midtown craft store.
But men have long been knitters. In fact, some believe fishermen who tied knots in their nets were the first to use knitting.
Some nations such as Portugal still have more men who knit than women. They practice a quick method of purling in the round that looks as though the knitter just flicks the stitches rather than actually knitting them. The yarn is carried over the shoulder and around the neck before it is dropped to the floor, where the weight of the skein of yarn creates the tension. The men use this method of knitting with such ease it would seem they don't even think about the work itself. Sweaters just appear from the circular needles. [more]

No idle hands here | Texarkana Gazette

No idle hands here
Texarkana Gazette - January 15 2005

Ages-old craft of knitting undergoes resurgence in popularity with young and old alike.
A dozen or more small hands grabbed for packages of knitting needles as instructor Ann Ousley began preparations for a basic knitting class for kids at a recent Discovery Place Children’s Museum special activity.
The children present for the class wore facial expressions indicating fascination and intense, pursed-lip concentration as each struggled to loop the yarn over their fingers before closing the knit.
“What do you do with the other chop stick,” inquired a female student as she inspected the knitting needles from her package, her puppy dog pony tails bouncing with her every move.
But these young participants wouldn’t be sampling Chinese food this Saturday morning, they were at the museum to learn the basics of knitting, a centuries-old practice which appears to be experiencing a rebirth in American popular culture. [more]

Wheel Tradition | Orlando Sentinel

Wheel Tradition
Orlando Sentinel - January 12 2006

A recent all-day spinning session at the Presbyterian Church of the Lakes in Orlando did not include exercise bikes or heavy sweating.
The group of about 30 Central Florida women who got together Saturday celebrated the age-old tool more associated with Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin -- the spinning wheel.
The second annual gathering, put on by the Sunshine Orlando Spinners guild, was in celebration of Distaff Day, which falls on the 13th day after Christmas.
Rhonda Colcord, organizer of the day and co-founder of the spinning guild, said Distaff Day is a celebration originating in medieval Europe that marks the end of the holiday and the return of womenfolk to their household projects, which in olden times included spinning, or twisting a colorful variety of raw fibers into yarn.
The distaff, a tool used in spinning, is a medieval symbol of women's work.
"When you look at the history, especially if you focus on women, that [spinning] was one of the activities that women did so often as an opportunity to get together," said Colcord of Winter Springs. [more]