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I Don’t Quite Know What to Think of This

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sweater flashmobI just had a link to this video come across my Facebook feed courtesy of Caron International’s Facebook feed, and I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

The link is to a video on Vimeo about one Loes Veenstra, resident of Rotterdam, who has been knitting sweaters since 1955 and tucking them away in her home.

There are more than 500 of them.

No one had ever worn them until this video was made.

It’s part fashion show, part flash mob. There’s a whole marching band decked out in coordinating black and white sweaters. And a trio singing “So Happy Together” by the Turtles. And the knitter herself in a throne-like chair in the middle of the street, decked out not in a sweater but in a fleece poncho.

Give it a look and if you can make more sense of it than I have, let me know. I’m mostly just wondering what would possess someone to knit so many sweaters and never give them to anyone?

If you can read Dutch, there’s apparently a book about the sweaters coming out, which you can read more about here.

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Comments

  1. I’m a Dutch student living in the States and have seen the video show up on FB last week multiple times. Hope this helps:
    For more information, please read this translation of the important parts of the NRC article:

    Designer Christien Meindertsma stumbled upon the collection Loes Veenstra has been making. The production level was higher than the give-away-rate. The designer decided to take pictures of them and create a book.

    She has made a wide array of different sweaters and they show the knitting culture as well as fashion sense through the last couple decades.

    Loes didn’t know that this what happened in the video was going to happen. She just knew about the book and was very surprised as well as happy to see all her work together. It was a true flashmob.

    The project is also part of a larger initiative to characterize living in the neighborhood in Rotterdam she lives in.

    http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2012/11/24/kijken-de-500-zelfgebreide-truien-van-loes-veenstra/

Have you read?

Embellish Your Knit Dishcloth with Flowers

One great thing to knit when the weather is warm (or honestly any other time) is dishcloths and washcloths. They are fun and easy projects and a great way to play with new skills. Pretty washcloths make cleaning a tiny bit more fun, and they’re great to have on hand as a quick addition to a store-bought gift. 

The Daisy Delight Dishcloth from Yarnspirations is a fun one for using leftover bits of green in your cotton yarn stash. What looks like the bottom in the picture is actually the left side as you knit it, and each little color section is worked with its own ball of yarn, intarsia style. 

That’s a little fiddly for a washcloth, but the effect is cute, and it’s a simple way to learn the basics of intarsia knitting (as well as reading a chart) if you don’t already have those skills. 

One the knitting is done, you add the flowers with a bit of lazy daisy embroidery, which is really easy to do even if you’re not that into embroidery. You could also potentially add flowers in duplicate stitch if you’d rather. 

This may be the most work you’ve put into a dishcloth, but isn’t it adorable? It would be fun to use as a hand towel through the spring and summer, and if you already have some leftover green yarn from other projects it should be pretty easy to do. 

You could also take this same concept and make it different colors. All dark green stems with stars on top might be reminiscent of Christmas trees, or brown with daisy stitch on top in different colors could be trees in the fall. 

However you stitch it, this looks like a fun little project for knitters who are comfortable with intarsia and reading charts or who are ready to try those skills. 

You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

Book Review – Dishcloths for Special Days [Knitting]

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