This book is less a book about knitting than it is a memoir, but since it's the memoir of a knitwear designer, you get some knitting instruction as a bonus. Elizabeth's writing style is so chatty and fun, I could scarcely stop reading. I hadn't intended to read this book in a week, but it is so engaging I wound up reading two chapters a day instead of one.
However, "Knitting Around" is the most personal, quirky, and arty of EZ's books, and the one I personally most enjoy rereading. The color picture sections even include photos of her drawings-EZ was an artist as well as a crafter.įor knitters studying the mathematical theory behind the craft, "Knitting Without Tears" was the primary reference book this book, like "Knitter's Almanac" and "Knitter's Workshop," were postscripts. Here, also, EZ includes her memoirs of escaping from Europe during the war, raising her baby-boomer children, and reviving what some had called a dying craft. Sweaters in this book aren't standard, and may be fun to design.
Here we learn to shape mittens knitted in one flat piece, design and knit a collection of neck warmers, and knit socks to fit individual legs. In this book "The Busy Knitter" is still newslettering along, explaining how to design and knit quirky little things other than the standard sweater patterns discussed in her earlier books. While her other books are evergreen, this is the one of her books that was specifically aimed at the generations after her-at us, that is. She demonstrated knitting on television, sold yarns and patterns out of a converted school building (hence Schoolhouse Press), taught people how to design whatever they wanted to knit through her books and newsletters, hosted a summer knitting camp, and eventually mentored a young immigrant from Greece who built what she'd been doing into a real commercial empire.ĮZ is gone now, her protege Alexis Xenakis has retired, and her daughter Meg and grandson Cully Swansen are elders of the knitting tribe. Elizabeth Zimmermann seemed to fit the hippie ideal of the perfect grandmother: quiet, modest, independent, earning a living by having fun.
In North America the craft was rescued by one charismatic immigrant from England. In the 1970s knitting was not a fashionable hobby.
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