"No Swastikas, Knitters Warned"

From Scotsman.com:

[300 Latvian craftspeople] knitting 4500 pairs of woollen mittens as gifts for November's Nato summit have been told not to incorporate the lucky Latvian Thunder Cross symbol into their designs, as it looks like a swastika.

An interesting site with other Latvian symbols says of the Thunder Cross: "this sign was popular to cut into the beds of children and to interweave into belts for newborn children to wrap them."

Unfortunately the Thunder Cross, despite its traditional use for hundreds of years and its use by Latvian Air Force (from 1918 to 1934), in insignias of other military units and other non-political groups, was tainted by its relationship with Perkonkrusts, a Latvian fascist group in the thirties.

NATO dignitaries will instead get mittens with other designs and "a jar of honey, a CD of local folk music, Latvian tea and a bottle of the national spirit – a 45% abv concoction of at least 25 different ingredients, known as Black Balzam."

Zombie Knitting

Inspired by the zombie armageddon imagination exercise in the Dawn of the Dead remake, I am reading zombie short stories. Last night it was Stephen King's Home Delivery in his Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Ghoulish zombies, yes, but not enough of them. Only mentions of the living being cannibalized - more gore, please.

The one highlight in the story lies in the pleasure this prodigal daughter of knitting got from the following two paragraphs:

The cold cobwebs of bone, which were all that remained of his fingers touched her throat before the baby kicked in her stomach - for the first time - and her shocked horror, which she had believed to be calmness, fled, and she drove one of the knitting needles into the thing's eye.

Making horrid thick choking noises that sounded like the suck of a swill pump, he staggered backward, clawing at the needle, while the half-made pink bootie swung in front of the cavity where his nose had been. She watched as a sea slug squirmed from that nasal cavity and onto the bootie, leaving a trail of slime behind it.

"Beutiful Art Made with Kintting"

"Beutiful art made with kintting," despite the terrible typing, excels in the knitting department. That is, if you like knit b-movie-worthy props.

A cat with its yarny guts spilling out; a crocodile eating a child - fed by a reluctant Southern teen momma we presume; a giant pair of scissors stabbing a happy-in-death schoolgirl; a shark snacking on a hapless swimmer, head first; a Pinocchio that bears a striking resemblance to Michael Jackson with his honker being sawed off (who knew wood could bleed?); a suicide bunny in a masochistic carrot fantasy; Curious George rowing to freedom on a phallic banana - check out the yarn ripples! - conjoined teddy bear twins; and, in a twist on every little girl's fantasy, a unicorn impaling a teddy bear on its trunk.

Which serious knitter created all this? The site has no names. Reminescent of the Unfortunate Animal of the Month Club, it's seriously warped.

The referring blog, Yumlum, has no further information to give. Chockful of the weird (my other favourite is the referral to the Barbie doll dishes) but I will be keeping an eye on Yumlum from now on.

(Cross-posted on Maktaaq.)

Braaaaiiiinnnsss

Joel Derfner, of The Search for Love in Manhattan, had a dream about a knitted brain. Suddenly he wants to knit a brain.

So he goes to the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art and asks Karen Norberg about her knitted brain. Karen tells him that he's the second person this week to ask for a pattern. She didn't make one.

Karen, if you ever stumble upon this, send everyone to me. My one and only completed knit item, a pink scarf, has been stretched to shreds. It's doing that brain wobbly-edge thing. I think we can cut up my scarf and turn it into a knitted brain.

(The Museum accepts further brain art: If you have some fabric brain art that you would like to see posted please send a jpg and a brief artist's statement to the Curator.)

Update on Giant Pink Bunny

Knitters might remember the giant knit pink bunny deposited in northern Italy by Austrian artist collective Gelatin (now Gelitin). Art MoCo has updated photos of the rabbit lying beneath the snow.

I'm sure you're all very jealous that I get to knit at work. I've been working on the Knitty Baseball sweater for my husband as a Christmas gift since July, and I am just working my way up the second sleeve. It's been so dead that it's taken only three days to get about 70 rows done!

Anyway, for diversion today I picked up a copy of the holiday issue of Vogue Knitting. The time-consuming looking patterns are delightful to browse, even though I'm not quite ready for Fair Isle colour work.

However, an item in the front section caught my eye as well: a paragraph on the online exhibition of knitted artifacts from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. When I went looking for the link, I found that the V and A has a whole page of links on all things knitting, including a gallery of 1940s-era knitting patterns. The exhibition includes a knitted sock from Ancient Egypt and items knitted from silk and gilt into fine patterns from Medieval Spain. Go, enjoy, knit.

Crazy Brit Knitters

A non-knitting friend and classmate who nonetheless knows an entertaining website when he sees one sent me the link to this British Knitting Group called Cast Off. Check out the photos and sample patterns for the Knitted Wedding. They also have a message board, patterns for sale, and a book.

BTW, browsing my local magazine racks yesterday, I noticed that the new issues of Vogue Knitting and Knit.1 are out. The new Knit.1 is a man-themed issue and the patterns look very good. At least, the man models look happy wearing them.