America Knits

by Falick, Melanie

• ISBN13: 9781579652876
• ISBN10: 1579652875
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-04-01
• Publisher: Artisan

Summary

Not only are the stories a great read, but the photos are so full of color and texture theyll make your fingers itch to start your own scarf or afghan.Glamour With a passion for textiles and a love of travel, Melanie Falick is the perfect writer for [America Knits].Vogue Knitting Acclaimed knitting author Melanie Falick traveled thousands of miles and interviewed dozens of knitters, spinners, dyers, and sheep breeders to create this inspiring and revealing collection of portraits and patterns. With profiles of 38 artisans and farmers,175 beautiful color photographs, and 30 original patterns whose difficulty ranges from basic to advanced, from traditional to contemporary, America Knits is the most complete survey yet published on this highly popular and vital art form in America.

Excerpts

I learned to knit as a very young child from my mother and my grandmother, then learned to purl from my aunt. I vividly recall the long, thin, pointy metal needles I practiced on, the yellow yarn, and the misshapen fabric I produced. In my mind, I can see myself sitting cross-legged on the floor in my aunt's study while she worked at her desk, carefully counting my stitches-which varied in number almost every row. I have no recollection of creating anything in particular, of even finishing a project during my childhood, though my memories of knitting are happy ones. As an adult, I had several false starts as a knitter, but once I was knitting consistently, the idea for this book came to me quickly. I worked in publishing so I was, perhaps even more than most knitters, interested in seeing the knitting books available. I searched the shelves at nearly every bookstore and library I visited and noticed that the most beautiful books came from England, and that the subtle message communicated through the lack of lavishly illustrated American publications was that British designers were more talented than their American counterparts-that they were more worthy of this glorious treatment. Even though Kaffe Fassett, one of the most celebrated and talented knitters \ of all time and the author of the most successful illustrated books about knitting, is American, he has resided in England since the mid1960s and his early books were published in the United Kingdom prior to becoming available in the United States. Like most knitters, wherever I traveled I would look not only for bookstores, but also yarn shops or any other fiber-related destinations I could identify, including farms, festivals, and museums. What I found were some of the most fascinating people I had ever met, many of whom worked quietly and with limited recognition in their litte coner of the world. I decided to write this book because I wanted to celebrate knitting in this country, its richness and its diversity. I worked on America Knits almost exclusively for one and a half years. In the beginning, I met with, talked on the phone with, and corresponded with hundreds of people-including yarn company owners, designers, artisans who create one-of-a-kind garments, gallery owners, farmers, and a profusion of nonprofessional knitters who are impassioned by the medium as well as by fiber in general. Slowly I began compiling the list of people and places I wanted to feature. It was important to me to link together the many different elements that feed into the knitting process-from the breeding of the animals that provide the fiber to the transformation of the fiber into yarn to the actual knit and purl stitches that yield the infinite possibilities that have been fascinating knitters for centuries. I also wanted to illustrate that knitting is not just a method of garment-making but also can be used to make powerful wearable as well as nonwearable visual statements. I tried to give the designers who created projects for America Knits a great amount of freedom so that their designs would be representative of who they are rather than who I am. Because I wanted this book to be warm and intimate, a reflection of how knitting fits into real lives, I made the decision to photograph America Knits without professional models. Whenever possible, I wanted to photograph garments on the designers or on members of their families or circle of friends, and in settings that represent the places where they live and work. Chris Hartlove, the photographer, wanted to shoot all of the photographs in natural light, which meant that we would be slaves to the weather and, ideally, would shoot only early in the morning and just before sunset, when the light was most beautiful. We traveled around the country together and, in the process of documenting the richness and diversity of knitting, spinning, dyeing, and an