Boing Boing » knitting

Knitted monster masks

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 12:44:55 +0000

Etsy seller Tracy Widdess's "Brutal Knitting" project features a number of truly remarkable soft, knitted monster masks.

Brutal Knitting (via The Mary Sue)

US Olympic Committee says sorry to knitters whom it claimed "denigrated" the games

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 16:44:21 +0000

The US Olympic Committee has apologized for describing the knitters' Ravelympics as "denigrating" to real athletes. Ravelympics are an activity on Ravelry, a community for knitters, in which members compete to complete knitting projects while watching Olympic events, producing hybrids like the "afghan marathon" and "scarf hockey." The Olympic Committee, worried that they will have a hard time raising millions for giant, evil companies like Dow Chemicals if knitters are allowed to share patterns that include the Olympic rings, sent a grossly insulting legal threat to the knitters of Ravelry:

We believe using the name "Ravelympics" for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country's finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work.

After a lot of hue and cry, the USOC said sorry, and suggested that knitters could give away the stuff they make to the USOC.

Jun 21 Statement from USOC Spokesperson Patrick Sandusky (Thanks, Gladys!)

On knitting 50 life-sized bees

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 23:28:16 +0000

Hannah Haworth found herself in the enviable position of having to knit 50 life-sized bees, which she did, and celebrated their completion with detailed notes and lovely photos.

Remember when I mentioned that I had to knit 50 life size bees? Well I finally finished them!! woop woop! I may have gotten a little obsessive with the detail, but I kinda always do. It was weird for me doing such a small scale project after the huge pieces Im used to making, but I enjoyed it a lot, I think I learned quite a bit from it.
These bees are made form 100% baby merino wool from Malabrigo. I especially love the way they dye their colours, they are pretty much iridescent
Making the bees was certainly a process. I began by knitting the body from the back to the head, then I picked up stitches to make the wings which I used a simple lace stitch pattern for.

bzzzzz (via Making Light)

Hand-knit superhero costumes gallery show in Knoxville

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:16:07 +0000

Mark Newport, whose hand-knit superhero costumes have been mentioned here before, has a gallery show at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville's Ewing Gallery. I really love these pieces -- they'd make great jammies (or, without the legs, hoodies).

IN ACTION: Mark Newport (via Neatorama)

Improving on the knit Dalek

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:14:29 +0000

I blogged "Extermiknit!", a knittable Dalek, back in 2007, but it turns out that an even cooler knittable Dalek of the same name was created on Feather and Fan in 2010, with an opening hatch containing a Kaled mutant, and here it is.

After completing the top of the Dalek as specified, I created an opening in the front by steeking carefully along the vertical line between the knit “instrument panel” and the purled rest of the midsection–just used some sewing shears and cut straight through the middle of the rightmost line of knit stitches, along the entire height of the midsection. I then carefully unraveled the stitches from right to left on the rows above and below the desired door area, to the left end of the “instrument panel”, and placed these two horizontal pairs of exposed stitches on DPNs.
This creates a kind of door flap, hinged vertically along the left-hand side. I sewed down the outer edge of the door with one yarn tail, and used a sewn bindoff and the other two yarn tails to fasten the top and bottom of the door flap. The door flap was now bound off and would not unravel.

FO: EXTERMIKNIT! EXTERMIKNIT! « Feather and Fan (via Making Light)