Knitting – For Women Only?

By: Jana Walliser

At first glance, knitting appears to be something only women do. When you think about knitting, you might have that picture of an elderly woman in her rocking chair in your mind, surrounded by her grandchildren wearing nothing but knitted clothes from head to toe.

Today, many young people do not know how to knit. Their hands are used to operating a computer mouse, to typing on a keyboard or to pressing keys. Holding two knitting needles as well as the wool in your hands feels like visiting an Asian restaurant for the first time. Starving and looking at a plate full of rice, you'll have to try and eat your food just using those two chopsticks. Too bad if you are really hungry! There are many people who do not know how to knit. Beginners, in particular, need a lot of time to create their first masterpiece. Stitch by stitch, row by row. You have got to have the right feeling, patience and concentration for this.

But where does all that knitwear which you cannot even tell it was knitted come from? A closer look reveals that there must by high-tech knitting machines capable of knitting even the most complicated patterns in no time. And that's where you find the men! They operate these giant knitters and they see to it that thousands of jumpers and gloves leave their machines ready to be sold. You see, knitting is not for women only and it is not necessarily about handcraft, either, though you might not have guessed that at first.

Kala, the cable lamp which is displayed at the exhibition KNITTED WORLDS, is surrounded by a 5 meter long, knitted tube composed of thousands of meshes. Impossible to knit all of these knitted tubes manually. It is hard to believe in what way those knitting machines are capable of knitting even the smallest meshes – that is simply fascinating!
Kala is available now in the TextielShop of the Textielmuseum.

About the Avatar works

By: Chrystl Rijkeboer

Balaclava’s knitted from human hair & prints on Alumount 80x80 cm.
2006

Origin: Avatar
In Hindu (Sanskrit) philosophy, an avatar, avatara or avatarim most commonly refers to the incarnation.

Today: Avatar
Within the virtual world, in which people meet nowadays, one assumes a certain identity through a so-called avatar. This is an icon or photo, which accompanies the communication.

After the work ‘Stolen Identity’ it was a great pleasure for me to find the first balaclava (Avatar-Martine) in the magazine ‘Mc Call’s Needlework & Crafts’ from 1965. I was pleased to find this balaclava in an American magazine. See the post by Lise Lefebvre for pictures of the balaclavas in this magazine.

Today such a cap would be impossible in the Western world. Balaclavas are so emotionally charged, that ideas of an ordinary cap, which is funny and protects against cold, is not from this age anymore. Balaclava’s have a very different impact nowadays. The balaclava is a signal for society: ‘Watch out! Terrorism! and Danger!’

The other 'Avatar' items are made by own design. The faces on the balaclavas are very contemporary: Identity and the fear of loosing it, but also possibilities of choosing new / different identities in the digital world are nowadays issues.

The series portraits named Avatar show people wearing balaclavas made out of human hair. An estranged image in which the identity of the one becomes veiled with the hair of an other.
All models got a preference choice which Avatar to wear. Posing with their 'balaclava type' a surprising inner picture of the models arise.

Photo: Stolen Identity-family
Photo: Cover Mc Call’s Needlework & Crafts 1965
Photo: Avatar –Martine

Rebellious knitting

By: Jimini Hignett

Odd that knitting has such a persistent association with staidness and primness. For me it’s always been something to associate with rebellion. But I notice that if you’re obviously not one of those prim, staid knitters, then people tend to react as if it’s some sort of threat. To their dignity if nothing else.

My mother knitted in the car – this way she didn’t have to get wound up if there was a red light. Whoever sat next to her had the job of warning her just before the light turned green. Other drivers always looked on in disgust and irritation, presuming that she was going to hold up the traffic, so we made a sport of shooting off the minute the light changed – neah neah!

At school we got knitting – with pink wool – yuk, girls’ colour! An oven-cloth. An oven-cloth for Chris sake, we were 7 years old - ridiculous. An oven-cloth from wool. I sabotaged as much as I could, and despite being a perfectly good knitter I managed to produce the lumpiest, squintest, least attractive oven-cloth of the whole class. At home, I made sure it was used to pick up a too-hot pan so that it scorched and the wool turned brown and slowly unravelled.

At secondary school we had uniforms, awful, even your socks had to be regulation colour – grey, fawn, navy-blue, white or maroon. I hated it. And it was dead boring, so I knitted socks, under my desk. But I’d get caught all the time and my knitting would be confiscated. At one point every teacher had a half-finished sock of mine in their drawer. But still I finished them – striped, in the colours grey, fawn, navy-blue, white and maroon. The English teacher sent me out to the corridor – for being an eyesore.

Knitting was a way to take control of your own appearance, to escape from the dreadful fashion of the time – I knitted jumpers from pictures of everything I loved.

Once in New York, in that famous jazz café where Woody Allen was said to play, I was knitting a plate of macaroni with sauce for the owner of an Italian restaurant whose birthday it was. The maître d’ told me I had to stop – no knitting at the bar. But the jazz singer whose band it was, lied to him that I was Britain’s foremost soft sculptress, so I got to keep knitting – neah neah!

Human identity, or how we see ourselves, forms a central theme in Chrystl Rijkeboer’s work.

By: Chrystl Rijkeboer

I am trained as an autonomous visual artist. Techniques are subordinate to the work. I try to learn skills, which I need to give my work the expressiveness it needs.
Ive been working with the material 'human hair' for many years. With this material I learned crafts like: felting, spinning, crocheting and knitting. Each time I try to find the limits in possibilities between the material and my ‘story’.

Striking is after years of incomprehension about my way of work, nowadays my work and craft-work in generally is very contemporary. I do believe that by our Western consumer society, products which are made with love, attention and craft skills, are highly appreciated.

The 3 dimensional works, which I spin, knit or crochet, are also processed into photographic- or video works and performances. I feel that works are "finished" after they are linked to the human again. For me it is of great importance to reunite the work on the human level again.

Foto’s: ‘She only wanted a boy’ & Twins_brown’

Desiree de Baar - Fragment of a building #1

By Desiree de Baar, participant KNITTED WORLDS exhibition, written the week before the opening

The work is nearly finished, I just have to sew the hinges on. I’m quite thrilled. The size and monumental character of the work is a new step in my work. It was hard work.

This new work is a mockup of the building where I have my studio. It is in an old school from the beginning of the last century in Rotterdam. According to Wikipedia a mockup is a “full-size non-functional model of a structure or device, used for teaching, demonstration, testing a design and promotion”. I did it the other way around. I made it as a reconstruction of an everyday-life site. These three doors used to enclose toilets. Now two of them serve as closets. I love the repetition of the form by the three doors. By isolating them into one image, I put the emphasis on the sculptural qualities of my daily environment. The monochrome colour and material amplify this.

A fragment of a hallway, that I have passed through so many times. Often without paying thís much attention. Instead of using a method like casting, I reconstructed it by knitting. It is a slow and intense technique. This technique, with its repetitive movements, fits the way I want to pay attention to ordinary things. To make a pattern for the knitting I have to measure every detail and listel and calculate the stitches. I like this mathematical aspect of the knitting. Through the knitting and the process involved I put the focus on the details, showing a poetic site of ordinary things.

You are most welcome to visit me on my website to see more of my work and earlier installations involving knitting-work.