KnitBits: Prison Knitting in Brazil, Tighter Ribbing and More Fun with Knitting

March 18, 2016 by Sarah White

I’m fascinated by this story about male prisoners in Brazil who knit and crochet for a fashion designer in order to earn money and a reduction in their sentences. Seventeen inmates at Arisvaldo de Campos Pires are currently working with Brazilian designer Raquel Guimaraes on her Doiselles brand, and more than 100 have gone through the program, which provides a small wage and gives workers one day off their sentences for every three days they knit (the story uses the terms knitting and crocheting interchangeably; though the pictures show knitting the garments show both). Click through to see some of their beautiful work.

By now we probably all know the benefits of knitting and crochet beyond making amazing stuff with our hands and some simple tools, but if you need a reminder, check out this list of six health benefits of yarn crafts from Starting Chain.

Have you watched the PBS show “The Mind of a Chef”? Fringe Association reminds/tells us that there is a lot of great knitting to spy in the second half of season three, which features brilliant Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson, and a lot of great sweaters. He’s also on an episode of the Netflix series “The Chef’s Table,” but I don’t remember there being as much knitwear in that one. “The Mind of a Chef” is available for streaming on Netflix, and probably from PBS as well.

Do you have the common problem of sloppy-looking knit ribbing? It happens because of the different amount of yarn used to make a knit stitch versus a purl. This is an old post that recently popped up somewhere, but the tip for knitting tighter ribbing, from Jessica Joy, is still worth checking out.

Finally, there are a lot of funny knitting memes out there, and Love Knitting has collected a few of its favorites on its blog. Download these to share on social media or use as a background on your computer or phone. I think my favorite is “Can you knit me a … no.” What’s yours?

[Photo via Reuters/Paulo Whitaker.]

Comments

Heidi Kirsch says
March 18, 2016 at 11:20 am
This picture is scarier than the one I saw a few days ago. In that one they were only wearing masks over their mouth & nose. Why is it that they are covering their whole face? Is it something I should be doing if I knit for long periods?

Have you read?

Easy Knit Baskets to Use All Your Stash

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.