There’s something that I genuinely hate about Glasgow: frost. Apart from being more insidiously dangerous than snow, since my hands and feet are usually cold even when outside is very warm, in frosty conditions I practically lose all the sensitivity in my extremities.
It has been such a cold and frosty day that I spent most of it dreaming about fun and bizarre knitwear. While I wouldn’t mind a huge pom-pom scarf by Timothy James Andrews, which is the sort of item that might keep the winter blues away, the semi-festive Christmas climate is inspiring me to concentrate on a more do-it-yourself kind of knitwear with some personalised motifs added in needlepoint.
Disliking all the motifs I recently saw on craft magazines, I settled on surfing the Internet to see what I could find and bumped into a great application that is going to come in handy if you want to produce warm and personalised knitwear with a technologically advanced edge.
knitPro is a free web application that allows you to upload any digital images/graphics and to instantly turn them into grid patterns for knit, crochet, needlepoint and cross-stitch projects. The idea was developed from pre-industrial craft circles that used to share patterns freely, passing them down from generation to generation. Apparently hundreds of patterns are also uploaded onto the site each week by knitwear fans from all over the world.
I tried transforming into patterns a few digital images, shots from my favourite films and other random stuff and the results were so intriguing that I now seem to have more patterns than time to actually work on them. In fact, I think I have so many patterns I can’t seem to be able to choose my favourite one.
knitPro was created by artist and activist Cat Mazza, the founder of craft collective microRevolt, a venture that fuses traditional craft techniques and digital technologies and also analyses the theme of sweatshop labour. Mazza has been using the knitPro application for her “logoknitting” projects: after creating the patterns of the logos of sweatshop offenders, she knits them into garments and other accessories to raise awareness and discussion on unfair labour practices around the world.
According to Mazza craft has a social and political meaning as the Stitch for Senate - a project that invited knit hobbyists to craft helmet liners for every US Senator to encourage them to bring home the troops from Iraq - proves.
I always conceived knitting as a very relaxing business that helped me to unwind, but I think that from now on I will combine it with a bit of political activism. Maybe Mazza is right: knitting can truly be revolutionary. My doubt remains though: which pattern I should go for now, the vintage Italian stiletto from the 50s, a detail from a Diabolik comic or my blog logo?
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