Bakker Baard about Breiwerkwest

Great piece by BakkerBaard about Breiwerkwest in the Parool PS 9th of July. This guy can for sure bake a great cake with surprising ingredients like pepper, but he can also write. I like his style. The piece describes in a nutshell what Breiwerkwest is about and it's also very funny. Thank you Bakker Baard.

Knitting-jam with Breiwerkwest

This thursday night I joined the BreiwerkWest for a knitting-in-public evening at the TokoMC at the Westergas terrein. It turned out to be a bunch of die-hard knitters and crocheters of all genders and ages. They meet every now and then in a public space to craft together. They also unite together around common goals; one of their first achievements is the covering of one of the bicycle racks in the Westergas-terrain appx. 1 year ago.

More recently the sheep Dolly (polystyrene) had been dressed up and exhibited in the Westergasterrain. Dolly turned out to be so irresistible that she has unfortunately been abducted. As you see here, all gone!

The BreiwerkWest group is right now working on a supersize Picknick blanket that is going to be finished and used for the world-record picknick on saturday 9th of July in Amsterdamse Bos.

 

Inititives like this Wild-breien or BreiwerkWest demonstrate that crafting has new relevance in our society today. Crafting can be used to unite people, people that do not necessarily know each-other, but they share an interest or passion for crafting. They are going public, no more hiding away in living rooms, now they knit-in-public. I could certainly sense that it felt almost intimidating for some of the other guests in the restaurant, they don't quite know what to make of it. And the goals and objects that they unite around are far away from baby clothes and coasters. Now they make public statements sometimes with political undertones, and most certainly commenting on the state of our society today.

You could almost say that crafting is becoming a new mean of political expression.

what has the Knitbitch been up to?

You have not heard much about the work of the Knitbitch herself lately. Let me tell you about a project that I have been working on, it's not finished, but well on it's way.  The poufs. There are 2 of them now, still working on the 3rd one.

After. 2 finished poufs.

If you have read some of my earlier posts you would know that my stash is not just a stash, it's a mountain that has accumulated over many, many years. Many people would say throw it all away it's worthless. I'm thinking this is a nice challenge for me, to bring all this yarn to use. Some of the yarn that I have accumulated is not exactly human body friendly. It's really itchy, actually I think it's carpet yarn. So for a number of times I started making poufs. My two first attempts where failures. The yarn was just not thick enough to make the crochet fit the proportion of the pouf, and once I started knitting a tube and filling it that was just too fat.

Then I suddenly remembered my mum's (again it's her) old trick for faking spool-knitting, and I started knitting a tube that way. And then it worked. However the tube became so thick that I could only do the crochet by hand. Not such a big problem as the crochetting itself is not work compared to the tube-knitting work which in this case took ages, spending nights in-front of telly. Working off all the daily stress through knitting.

How-to megacrochet a pouf

the projects are not really re-knitting projects, except for the grey pouf which is half re-knit. Half of the yarn came from a sweater-jacket that i had made almost 20 years ago. It was still beautiful, but I have not worn it for 18 years, so I set to un-ravelling it to create the pouf from it.

Before. Jacket I knitted appx. 20 years ago.

will show you the whole collection once pouf nr.3 is finished. It might take a little while!

Milan Designweek craft-work

Of course this year in Milan the talk was all about Lidewij Edelkort'sTalking Textiles whiccelebrated the return of the chunky, clearly handmade and crafted textiles into our living-room. At the Center of Milan at Spazio Gianfranco Ferre was the exhibition with the celeb designer names, that have all ventured into the chunky crafty sfere. But I was much more charmed by part II, set-up in Venture Lambrate, where the more artsy work could be found by young relatively unknown designers.

Ella Robinson is embroidering on wood. How amazing is that? She drills holes and her colorful and poetic embroidery "bleeds" onto the wood from there. Funky, etnic, you could be misled to think that there where some hidden African roots embodying it.

Ella Robinson

Ella Robinson

Marie Paysant La Roux is using a somewhat similar technique, punching her holes in soft paper pulp egg-packs. It almost seems like the egg-pack is hosting a parasite fungi culture that is growing even overflowing the natural boundaries of the egg-pack
 

Marie Paysant Le Roux

Elaine Yan Ling Ng uses the Neologism Naturology to describe her work. It's a hybrid word combining nature and technology. Her re-created nature was mounted on a slice of wood, a bit like Ella Robinson but executed in a very different way. Elaines work is subtle and transparent almost a reproduction of fragile leaves, animated by LED's that bounce.

Elaine Yan Ling Ng

In the PlusDeSign Gallery I saw these wonderful skinned furniture. The designer, and I unfortunately lost the name, has crocheted new jackets, thereby upcycling the furniture. Also by adding the cute coaster flowers she makes the stark and rigid office-furniture kind and friendly.

in a little gallery in Lambrate, I saw these coasters, which where nicely in contrast with the sweetness of crocheting, saying FUCK. Maybe swearing at the boredom of the everyday?

and to close off look at this wonderful horse, carrying death and all his accesories. It's as if a rarity cabinet has been opened and hung onto the horse. Frederique Morrel wallpapers horses and paraphernalia with salvaged needlepoint. Needlepoints as we remember them from grandmothers living-room. The combination makes for something grotesque, baroque and alarming. The total seemed quite camouflaged against the background, but once you noticed what was really in-front of you can hardly prevent a feeling of disbelief arising.

Frederique Morrel @ Rosana Orlandi

Knitting grafitti in Utrecht

Photography; Inge Noordijk

Photography; Inge Noordijk

Photography; Inge Noordijk

Photography; Inge Noordijk

In April some beautiful (and provocative?) knitting graffiti was placed in Utrecht. Something that definitely catches your eye, if you are walking along the Old Chanel and watching all the historic buildings. But apparently this was too much for somebody, because the graffiti is now gone. As is in the word graffiti; there is something subversive and forbidden in the act of decorating the city-scape with-out permission. So maybe it's the city that has removed the graffiti. It could of course also just be some passers-by that thought this was so cool, they wanted to have it for themselves! And then they nicked it? What do you think happened?

Knitting-in-public

Lucky enough to visit London again, and this time, I catched this girl knitting-in-public in Leons "slow" fastfood in Soho. She said that she would always bring her knitting and knit everywhere.

Stines miniature

What Stine really wanted for her confirmation (sealing of convenant made at baptism), was a mini-mi portrait doll of herself, as was looking on the day.

Of course I could not have the doll ready for the day, because untill the last minute it was not clear what she was going to look like :-) amongst others the hair-do was decided last minute, on the morning itself. So in order to compensate for the shameful lack of present I made a little illustration and used it as a gift-card as a token that she would get the doll later.

This is what Stine looked like on the day itself. Pretty lady, heh? I particularly liked the hair-do, which I think I didn't render very well on the doll.

Here are some of the details; the marguerite/daisy bracelet, a very traditional Danish type of jewellery famously made by Georg Jensen.