Letters
Painting With Wool
Hey all, we have an invitation for you. As you know, our annual Bang-It-Out knitalong starts on Monday. If you’d like to join us for a free zoom cast-on party on February 1 at 4:00 central time, sign up here. We’ll have tips and tricks and fun to share, and we’d love for you to join us.
—Kay and Ann
Dear Ann,
I’m having a grand time knitting my way through my Kites Throw from MDK Field Guide No. 16. For once in my life, I’m taking my time with a project, and not feeling driven to finish as fast as I can—which is often a big part of the fun of a knitting project for me.
This is not some new awakening on my part to the meditative aspects of knitting. I have no choice but to slow down, because 206-stitch rows, using 15 colors of wool, cannot be rushed. They will not let you. You have to adapt to the rhythm of dropping, crossing-over, picking up, knitting the motif, then dropping, crossing-over, and knitting the next motif. The pattern builds steadily, but not quickly.
How am I—Miss Hell-Bent for Leather, Miss Bang-It-Out, Miss Instant Gratification—able to summon the zen for this type of knitting? By realizing that this slower pace is not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s the way knitters achieve this particular kind of beauty. The only way out is through, knitting stitch by stitch in color. It is deeply satisfying.
A while ago, during my trek through a vintage kit for Kaffe’s Big Flower Cardigan, I was struck by the similarities between knitting and weaving fine art tapestries, and the parallels between knitting and weaving have helped me embrace intarsia. In Field Guide No. 16, we wrote about Dovecot Studios, a tapestry workshop and center in Edinburgh, Scotland. At Dovecot, master weavers sit for hours—days, weeks—in front of giant works in process, with dozens of bobbins of wool dangling down. With headphones in, on wheely chairs, they peer at a drawing, and work their way across the warp, picking up a strand, filling in a few spaces with that color, tamping it down, over and over.
It’s mesmerizing to watch. There’s no way to speed up the process. The only way out is through.
I’ve been saving the video up top for months. In 6 minutes, it takes us through a multi-year collaboration between the artist Chris Ofili and the weavers at Dovecot to produce The Caged Bird’s Song, 2014-2017.
For a closer view of the weaving process (and talk of the marvels of wool as an artist’s medium), here’s a video documenting Alison Watt’s monumental Butterfly tapestry for the Theatre Royal building in Glasgow:
And now, back to my tangle!
Love,
Kay
I truly enjoyed the podcast! The creativity shows in the tapestry.
Stunning!!!!!
Wow. Mesmerizing, indeed. The pretty Scottish accents seemed to add to the magic. Did they say how long it took?
One of the best aspects of knitting is, there is some stitch for everyone. In normal times, at a drop in knitting, I was speaking with a man who knitted gorgeous scarves. He expressed a dislike for cables. When asked why? He replied, ” they slow me down.”
On my way home, I thought how wonderful knitting is offering so many options. He loved various rows of stitches and combination of k2tog and yarn overs.While others embrace the variety of cables winding and braiding through their fingers.
I am so grateful especially in these times for knitting. I can still be excited by a soft package in the mail. Knowing it is yarn and anticipating the feel and texture for a new cast on.
You so beautifully expressed a common love of knitting!
That made up fir an early rise after a poor nights sleep. ❤️
The beauty made me teary-eyed….
Just amazing!!!! Thanks so much!! Such richness of color, light, and sound!!
Thank you so much for this morning gift! I left tapestry weaving 30 or 40 years ago; I still miss it. This was a glorious reminder; moved me to tears.
Celebrating The Stitch? That Barbara Smith?
No….sorry….. just another unremarkable Barbara Smith . Even my local lumber yard has to sort me out from all of the others who share my name!
Spectacular. ❤️♥️❤️ I’ll never walk past a tapestry with the same disregard again. Amazing to see all the thought and hands and handiwork that went into creating this glorious work of art. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for this….so beautiful.
All the clips about the Dovecot weavers are fascinating. Their eye and use of colour is mesmerising. I enjoyed the apprentice film on how he built his skill.
The many recipes that are available when you’re using a strand of 5 plies of “almost” the same colors make such beautiful colors. Thank you for these glimpses into such a zen workday. I would really have to fight off the “look back.”
This is absolutely stunning! I had goosebumps when she cut it off …
Flabbergasted.
My new mantra… ‘There’s no way to speed up the process. The only way out is through.’
Such incredible skill and devotion. Thank you for sharing.
Some days, when we despair about humanity, we need to remind ourselves what pinnacles of beauty and artistry we are capable of.
So true
ooooh…massively inspring. thank you for sharing this.
Intarsia has nothing on tapestry when it comes to SLOW.!
As a knitter who likes lace and cables, while knitting the cityscape scarf, I found myself enjoying the challenge of the color switching more than the actual knitting. I blocked it yesterday and seeing it laid out I was struck at the beauty of all the colors and amazed. The video reminds me that the detail, the big picture, the process, the result so come together to make magic happen.
This is so delightful- thank you! Just the rabbit hole I needed today
WOW! The tapestries in the two videos are so exquisitely beautiful I am moved to tears. Thank you so much.
My granddaughters loved watching these!
Many thanks for this. I have the privilege of living in Edinburgh and am old enough to remember when the Dovecot building was a swimming baths.
It’s an amazing place and it’s wonderful to walk round the mezzanine looking at the fantastic tapestries they’ve done. Also, being able to view the artists at work is amazing. Such skill and talent! And sometimes just looking at the dozens of colourful yarn cones alone can raise the spirits.
Due to lockdown it’s well over a year since I’ve visited but it’s top of my list to visit when restrictions allow. Once again, thanks! x
That is fascinating and beautiful! What a masterpiece! I think sounds of the weaving are so interesting, the shshshsh of them beating the fiber down and the tinkle of the bobbins bumping each other.
Just blown away! Ultimate marling!
I am always grateful to MDK for introductions to amazing artisans such as Dovecot and its weavers. Thank you for your wide scope of interests and for sharing them with us.