The Knitting Empress

I have an obsession with yarn. Check out Ravelry for original patterns! https://www.Ravelry.com/designers/Alena-Ruman

[knittingcelebs]

Scenes from Norway’s “Slow TV,” 2013.

‘A "National Knitting Night" started, of course, with shearing the sheep; knitting the sweater came much later in the 13-hour broadcast.’

‘Knit along or get lost in the hypnotic rhythm of knit one pearl one with NKR’s National Knitting Evening – a 2013 live attempt to break the world record for quickest time knitting a jumper. Whoever said Slow TV was boring never watched this: they literally shear a sheep on screen.’

[hernymills]

Here's a link! https://tv.nrk.no/serie/national-knitting-eve/2013/DVNR30004613/avspiller

[knittingempress]

THE LINK WORKS!! 😍😍 May all the gods and goddesses bless you forever!

This used to be on Netflix but they took it down years ago. It brought me SO MUCH comfort at a time when I had a dead end job and was so depressed I didn’t think I’d amount to anything or get anywhere. My job had weird hours so I was always working during local knit nights and I felt like I couldn’t share the simple joy of making with other people. I’d constantly have it on in the background when I was knitting/spinning/crocheting and I felt like I wasn’t alone. It’s so wholesome and is like sitting and chilling with long lost friends all making something beautiful.

I am so stoked it’s back in my life! It’s also crazy how in the 4ish years I was without it how far I’ve come. But I’ll always love to visit the Norwegian sweater ladies!

[emilysidhe]

Knitting finished as of last night! Still need to weave in a few ends, wash, and block.

Was aiming for 48” x 60”, came out 39” x 60” so far, but I’m hoping to be able to block it to a little wider and I’m ok losing a few inches of length for that

[iknityounot]

Melt the ICE Hat Pattern

In the 1940’s, Norwegians made and wore red pointed hats with a tassel as a form of visual protest against Nazi occupation of their country. Within two years, the Nazis made these protest hats illegal and punishable by law to wear, make, or distribute. As purveyors of traditional craft, we felt it appropriate to revisit this design.

All proceeds from the sale of this pattern go to local immigrant aid organizations who will distribute the funds to those impacted by the actions of ICE.

Approximately 200 yards of RED yarn of your choice in fingering, DK, or Worsted weight.

The sample shown was knit in Blue Sky Fibers Skyland for the DK version

Suggested Needles

Fingering weight yarn: US #4 / 3.5mm

DK weight yarn: US #6 / 4mm

Worsted weight yarn: US #8 / 5mm

There is also a crochet pattern available HERE

[sublunarymeanderings]

NOW, let us all take a deep breath, and forge on into the future; knitting at the ready.

Elizabeth Zimmerman, Newsletter #22 Spring 1969.

[stitchposts]

what is your LEAST favorite stitch?

I don't like counted work at fucking all. So: the cross stitch.

[rabbitindisguise]

reading this as someone who does cross stitch but is scared of the other kinds of embroidery is like overhearing an incredibly tall and buff person say they have beef with Mr. Tom, the kitten that chills at the bookstore

[stitchposts]

FUCK Mr. Tom and his stupid little fluffy tail ok. And his little charted designs.

[the-dragongirl]

Okay, but this neglects the true villain of embroidery stitches: the French knot

[stitchposts]

Don't you dare malign my girl again

[im-a-dream-wizard]

Ok the french knot is very useful but it is a BITCH to do it consistently

[stitchposts]

[stitchingaroundthebend]

My toxic knitting trait is that I have made a lot of sweaters, and so I have a pretty good idea of how certain types of construction will fit my body, and if I pick up your pattern and it is not the construction I prefer, most of the time I will strip it for parts and bastardize your invention into a frankensweater made the same way as all of my other favorites.

[dykes-who-stitch]

Speaking of my dissertation, I've been discouraged from utilising surveys however I figured some anecdotal data from the craft community would benefit my thesis or at very least my presentation on the subject so no time like the present

Have you been inspired from knitwear on film / TV to make your own piece?

Yes I have made a project inspired by knitwear costuming

yes, I have made a piece inspired by a costume that WASN'T knitwear

I am currently working on a piece inspired by costuming

not a knitter, but I have sought out an item of knitwear because of a costume

I have not

Voting ended onSep 15, 2025

If you have been inspired, please feel free to reblog or comment with what piece of knitwear inspired you, anyone who has knit a handsome Chris sweater this includes you

Edit: if you PLAN to knit something inspired, please select in progress, as I couldn't include it in the section due to the polls character limits

Thanks!

[amarenacherriezzz]

btw it still exists ˆˆ

here's the written out link:

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/1940s-knitting-patterns

[batbetbitbotbut]

Very comforted with old crafts - spinning and weaving, but doubtless applicable to more - that there are no new mistakes I can make. People have done these crafts for millenia and will continue to do them for millenia. I manage to make a special and unique one-time-only mistake? Not likely!

[batbetbitbotbut]

Every project is my own and brings something new into the world, but every fuckup is part of a rich tradition of fuckups by all the crafters who have gone before

[buckets-of-dirt]

Shawls are so deceptive because you knit the first few rows really fast and go "ah yes this'll be a breeze" and then by the end each row takes like 45 minutes. And it gets me every time

[knithacker]

Your Next Project Is Here: Knit an Epic Sliding Tiles Afghan, Designed By Tammy Canavan-Soldaat: 👉 https://buff.ly/3cd7OuJ

[batbetbitbotbut]

Blanket/ playmat #2 is underway, this time with a lightly padded texture! Video is 2 minutes of me stuffing the latest complete row (quiet, birdsong), then 2 minutes of awkward weaving because my phone is in the way of the very long unwieldy shuttles (loud, loom noises). Each pocket is completely sealed between the two layers of fabric as they are woven, no seams, no way to open it again except for scissors.

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

me?? checking knitting books out both to support my library and to avoid paying per pattern??? it's More Likely Than You'd Think

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

update:

VOLUME ACQUIRED!! specifically for the YOU SHAWL NOT PASS pattern (pictured bottom left of the cover!!), but i'm VERY stoked to flip through the rest of this, too

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

ANOTHER UPDATE:

YARN ACQUIRED!!! as soon as i saw Mothy and the Squid's absolutely GORGEOUS "Inner Fire" yarn, i knew that was 100% what i needed for the Balrog-themed "You Shawl Not Pass," and after a Slight Snafu about Shades of Black, my Much More Appropriately Saturated OPAL arrived today!! i am LOCKED and LOADED and PREPARED FOR SHAWLDOM!!

(i will absolutely not be starting this right away, i've got a blanket in the works and need to do some Little Projects For The Dopamine Of It All, but it is HERE and i COULD and THAT'S WHAT MATTERS!!)

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

SO IT HAS BEGUN:

so the cast on for this one STARTS at 162 stitches, and then we come out swinging with some UNHINGED EARLY EDGE INCREASES, but so far so good!! we'll see how long it actually takes to Make This Thing Happen (it's a christmas present so....)

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

made it past "cast on and setup"!! honestly loving the big long stretch of garter in the middle, because it turns it into a Social Project (read: i can chatter instead of having to count all the way across lol). so far, so good! onward to chevrons!

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

okay so i shoved this to the bottom of the stack to work up a [REDACTED] real quick and then most of my mom's cowl, AND now it's nano, HOWEVER!: i picked this up again this afternoon, got to a stitch notation in the pattern, had exactly this mood:

, googled the vexing stitch, found a youtube link in my search history, and all of a sudden DID recall so. that's how this is going lmao

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

update!: have made it to the end of the section labeled "CHEVRONS" and now i am onto the section labeled "CONTINUE CHEVRONS" (in which she hits you with a "Read carefully through this section before beginning as multiple steps occur at the same time," which has been making me low-key nervous since the first time i read through the pattern, because it looked Convoluted and Tricky).

fortunately! her instructions for the multiple simultaneous steps are just written unhingedly! it's basically "keep working in the established pattern BUT make it bigger every 8 rows to account for the increases in said 8th row" lmao. i wrote myself out a handy cheat sheet so i have something to check off (because i've been putting check marks upon row completion but. ah. seventy-eight (78) more rows is. too many check marks, for the current printed pattern to withstand).

making good progress on the first ball of black yarn! theoretically i'll use a second one, too, and then switch to the FLAMES. i'm so glad i'm not speedrunning this all in december lmao

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

made it to the end of the first ball of yarn!! she is. Growing Up.

i could switch to a bigger cable to see her better but i don't wanna

anyway! just finished the fifth "CONTINUE CHEVRONS" repeat (what timing!!), so there's only four and a half left before the contrast color switch. very interested to see how much of the second ball of black yarn i need for this--i'm already going through a lot per row, but there's also only four and a half repeats of the pattern with the contrast color, and that allegedly will use one ball or less also. so! hoping to have some extra black at the end, but We Shall See.

now, onward, to Poorly Joining In The Second Ball!

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

behold, the fun part: COLOR!!!

finally made it to mothy and the squid's INNER FIRE yarn, and hot damn is it delightful fun!! it's way more interesting to work than the solid black, and it's gonna look cool? hot as hell when it's done!! less than four pattern repeats to go!

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

WAY PAST MY BEDTIME TOO HYPED TO SLEEP BAD LIGHTING PICTURES LET'S GOOOO~~

HERE'S THE SCRUNGLYASS HERSELF, FRESH OFF THE NEEDLES, AND HER POT OF STEW (TRAGICALLY POTATOLESS):

it took me 88 minutes and 10 seconds (plus or minus maybe 2 min)(i had a stopwatch going but also Family Interruptions and my stopwatch game isn't hair-trigger accurate) to bind off all 646 stitches, but i DID IT and now she is BLOCKING and i am MOST PLEASED!! i'll post pinned pictures once i have daylight and then drape pictures once she's dry, but WOW what a DAY!!

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

*this point on your dash without witnessing THE COMPLETED SHAWL, is what he means by "you shawl shall not pass," here

hello again world!! guess what has been BLOCKED and PHOTOGRAPHED and WRAPPED!! BEHOLD!!

she's 65 inches at her widest and 17 inches from neckline to central point! she is VERY wrappable and wingspanny and cozy!! i'm so pleased with how she turned out! she took two skeins (a skein and a half really) of OPAL and most of the INNER FIRE, and the pattern can be found on ravelry here.

thanks for joining me on this treacherous quest--i'm glad most of our fellowship made it past the balrog. now, if you'll excuse me, i'm going to go collapse in a heap and pine after second breakfast.

[milkweedman]

fiber arts really is such an insane category of Things in how it can draw you in. like, 6 or 7 years ago i learnt to crochet and made a few terrible hats and scarves. then i learnt to knit because i wanted to knit a scarf for my friend (now fiance :D). then i realized it should be a woven scarf so i picked up weaving instead, but i still really liked knitting so now i was doing 3 crafts. somewhere along the way i started dyeing yarn as part of my kitchen experiments, and then i was like fuck it i wanna make my own yarn ! and that is where the problems happened. in the span of like 5 years ive acquired like $2000 of various tools (spinning wheel, combs, cards, blending board, several looms, etc), bought dozens of fleeces, and now my bedroom is basically a craft room with a bed, i have wool covering every flat surface in there as well as a huge dresser full of wool and several large drawers full of wool, i meticulously scrape every last bit of avocado out of the peel so i can use it to dye fleece, and i don’t go anywhere (including in my own house) without at least 2 knitting projects and a spindle.

im not complaining or anything, but the rapid shift from ‘guy who does stuff, idk’ to ‘guy who is worryingly obsessed with wool and will infodump at length about medieval sheep husbandry and the history of nettle as a textile if you give him half a chance’ is like. extremely funny to me.

[historical-nonfiction]

Someone living in Sweden during the Iron Age wore this cloak. Unfortunately, they wore it while they were murdered: forensic analysis found the holes in the cloak match how stabs would have penetrated the folds of the cloak when it was being worn.

Dating to 360 to 100 BCE, is also the oldest known example of a houndstooth pattern!

[stitchthisfiona]

He sits on my lap while I spin, he does the little jiggle

[redlightofdawn]

what they don't tell you is that creating objects with fiber crafts is like magic.

not only in that you create a 3D object out of a line and cleverly placed knots and weaves.

but also in the way that you will at one point look at something you made and realise countless people have probably done something similar to what you are doing now, even if you aren't following a recipe. a basket is a basket is a basket, and humans have been using fiber crafts for ages to make them. out there, at some point in time probably created a lopsided basket just like the one you made, and smiled at it in joy.

that connection. that's the real magic.