Celebrate the Offbeat Side of Yarncraft with Yarn

Have you heard about the documentary Yarn by Una Lorenzen? Maybe you’ve been lucky enough to see it already. I don’t live anywhere near any of the places where the film is being screened in the United States, but I was lucky enough to get a screener from the filmmaker and I really enjoyed it.

Now I am going to say up front that this movie is not about knitting. There’s actually not really any knitting in it at all, though there are people wearing handknits. The story it tells is more about the playful and political side of yarn craft rather than the purely practical, and I guess it’s easier to find crocheters in that world rather than knitters.

The movie profiles Olek, the Polish crochet artist who is known for covering people in crochet (as seen above); Tilde Björfors, the artistic director of Cirkus Cirkör, which has done a performance called Knitting Peace (yes, it involves knitting, and acrobatics on strings, and is really cool); Tinna Pórudóttir, an Icelandic yarn graffiti artist who takes her talents to Spain and Cuba in the film; and Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam, the designer and crocheter behind Net Play Works, which makes those awesome crocheted playgrounds.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC10LplOF0M]

Even without knitting, this is a film that knitters, and indeed anyone who likes yarn for any reason, will enjoy. The narration, if you can call it that, is by Barbara Kingsolver, reading a piece called “Where it Begins,” which is lovely.

I had a lot of fun watching it while doing a little crochet and knitting. It would be fun to take your knitting and head out to a screening if there’s one near you (it’s not currently available on DVD or for digital download, but maybe someday!).

Have you seen or heard about this movie? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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I can’t resist a pattern that’s both useful and a little silly, and that’s exactly how I feel about the Rybka pouch pattern from the delightfully named Rat and Sea Witch.

I know you’re going to ask, because I did, too. Rybka means little fish in Polish. (And because you’re also probably going to ask, Rat and Sea Witch comes from people’s attempts to say the designer’s name, Ratasiewicz, which if you say it fast kind of sounds like rat and sea witch.)

It’s easy to make a little fish bag in different sizes to suit your needs. The pattern has specific instructions for an Airpods Pro case and a pencil case, but you could change the length easily to hold more stuff, and change the size in general by working with a different weight of yarn.

The pattern calls for sock yarn and mohair held together to make a fingering weight gauge, but you could try it with heavier yarn and see what size bag you end up with.

Whatever size you make it, this looks like a fun project for holding trinkets or everyday items. The mouth of the fish is the mouth of the bag, and it closes with a drawstring that is also the strap. I wonder, too, if you could make one of these with a small clasp frame that could be the fish’s mouth and then you could just work I cord straps that would attach to the sides of the fish.

I could also see stripes, or fish of different colors to use up your yarn leftovers. How about a sunglasses case with a little loop to attach to your bag? Once you start thinking about all the ways you could use a fish-shaped bag in your life, I think you’ll see that you probably need more than one.

If you make one of these I would love to know how it went!

You can grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Rat and Sea Witch]

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