Wild Knitting

Never again will I be able to think that knitting has anything to do with old ladies in rocking chairs! Actually, the "Forget-Me-Not Bikini" spread alone was plenty to do that. The diagrams are drawn in the loose "no synthetic machine did THIS!" style characteristic of seventies craft books. What's uncharacteristic is the stuff it tells you to knit. It does tell how to knit some relatively normal objects such as sweaters, but they incorporate all kinds of alarming things into them, such as tinsel, feathers, found objects, and clownishly large pom-poms. Unlike older craft books, this weirdness is intentional. If you had any doubt, the aforementioned bikini will convince you that these girls did have an alarming sense of humor. Then you get to the knitted lipstick, the knitted cigarettes, and the knitted cigarette lighter. (All nonfunctional, but very realistic.) There's the gigantic beanbag chair sized knitted fruits meant as floor furniture, including a cluster of grapes, a banana, and a great cushy pineapple. You get the knitted evening gown with the scalloped open areas all down the sides that give people a pretty good view of the model's breasts. The pullover sweater with a three-dimensional pastoral landscape on it, with the puffy trees standing up on your shoulders and the pom-pom sheep wandering around at your midriff. You get lots and lots of the knitted lacy transparent lingerie. You get the knitted socks shaped like animal feet, with leather pads. You get the knitted bats, bees, and caterpillars to pin to your evening-wear like a corsage. You get the entire knitted indoor garden, with knitted brick floor and knitted potted cacti. You will laugh and/or gasp in shock at some of those things when you see them. The photography is what makes this even better. The photography is self-aware but artificial and posed, sexual but probably not obscene, and it's blazingly colorful. There's a few photos with a male model, wearing thick makeup like a silent movie star, dressed as a stage magician. There's quite a few women, lit from below, wearing stark red lipstick... those are the ones that made us wonder if this was indeed Rocky Horror inspired, although there are no knitted fishnet stockings or anything directly from the movie. And there's the photo of the Forget-Me-Not Bikini.

If you like unusual knitted items then Wild Knitting is a book for you! It contains patterns for everything from risque knitted evening gowns, to lingerie, knitted fruit cushions, flowers (and an indoor garden!), even a knitted bat that can be worn as cocktail hat (not to mention the "armadillo wrap"). Definitely a book for the adventurous and those with a good sense of humour, Wild Knitting is definitely staying on my knitting shelf!