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The World of Illusion Knitting

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PICKING UP THREADS

This was written in
2007
so is now very dated

In the early days it was more cost effective to photocopy the pages. The school where I was teaching had invested in reproduction equipment far in excess of its needs. They were only too glad to accept work from outside the school’s own demands. The pages could be copied more cheaply than by going to a commercial company and the school was also able to make a profit to help to offset their expenditure. The photocopied pages were fastened with a plastic spiral binding.

This was wonderful for getting us started but it wasn’t long before it began to have drawbacks. We weren’t completely happy about the amateur-looking binding and the real problems arose when we needed books during school holidays but had no access to the machinery. We already had the best domestic printer on the market. It was very slow by today’s standards but, given time, it would give results. We invested in a ‘Thermal Binding Machine’ so that we could add glossy white plastic covers with transparent fronts. This binding process should have been easy. It is certainly much more predictable now than it was then. The machine works by melting the glue which is already on the spine of the plastic cover. This becomes liquid with the heat and holds all the pages together. In those early days the glue seemed to have a very short shelf-life and sometimes got very sticky whilst still refusing to hold anything in place. Covers came in a variety of thicknesses and there was a very fine line between those that worked properly, those that were slightly too fat to grip all the pages, and those slightly too small so that the first few pages popped out again when the book was released from the machine. A change in the make of paper being used could make enough difference to have to change the cover.

We persevered and, apart from the odd occasion when the pages were put in upside down or we forgot to include the title page, it worked well. It is a time-consuming activity and would not have been suitable if we had been trying to produce large numbers but generally we only need to produce a few at a time. It is the method we have used ever since though the machine has since been replaced by a better version.

The book proved to be very popular amongst our ‘fans’. It still continues to sell today, in the same format and at the same price despite never having been advertised anywhere other than our own web site.

But back to 1994! One of the American ladies we met via CompuServe happened to be married to someone who had recently moved to England, working for a craft publisher and who was looking for authors of books about ‘soft crafts’. We were asked to write a pair of books which were eventually titled Creating Knitwear Designs and Making Knitwear Fit. The only brief for these was that they should be about more conventional knitting and written in a similar style to Woolly Thoughts. Again we had free rein over what went into the books. The only significant change was in the titles. The publishers did not like the word play that crept into our original titles but they did like the pictures which were kangaroos in one and snakes in the other. These two books were popular, especially with knitting and design courses in colleges, though we always felt a little detached from them. They were a diversion from our main route.

The CompuServe Craft Forum brought other bonuses. Until I joined it I had never heard of a ‘square swap’ but, before long, I was involved in my first. Each of a group of twelve members agreed to send a square to each of the other members of the group. The only rules were that the squares should be twelve inches, knit or crochet and in natural colours. As you might imagine it took quite a while for everyone to complete their squares. Eventually squares arrived from various parts of the world. The range of yarns and talents was amazing. I wanted each square to stand out so I added a terracotta border to them all and stitched them together to make a large wall-hanging. When the hanging was complete I took it to school and was even more staggered by the reaction of my pupils. Most of them were of Asian origin and many had a very poor grasp of English but there was something to catch the attention of each of them.

Some were captivated by the square I had deliberately put at the bottom corner. It was crochet with a 3D bear’s face worked into it. It had googly eyes. Others were interested in the techniques or the concept of being able to communicate with people in other countries to the extent that such an item could be produced but it wasn’t these that gave me the basis of the next few lessons. I had used my sewing machine to embroider a ribbon with the name of the person who made the square and where they lived. I had stitched these ribbons to the back of the squares and printed a grid to go alongside, with the same information. It immediately became obvious that the vast majority of my pupils had absolutely no idea where these places were.

From talking to them, I discovered that they thought Pakistan and Bangladesh were near to England. After all they could go five miles down the road, get on a plane and it would take them there. France was much further away. They knew this was true because they had been on a day trip to France and it took a very long time to get there on a coach. America was even further away because you couldn’t go on a day trip to get there and it cost a lot of money. We tend to take it for granted that children see the world the same way we do but it certainly wasn’t the case with these. The wall-hanging became a wonderful teaching vehicle. They learned about where the countries are, distances, time zones and much, much more. It had more impact than any Maths lesson I could have contrived. If I’d known then all that I know now I might have seen this as another pointer to where our road was leading. Not only was the knitting unconventional, the teaching was heading the same way.

Click here to see my first square swap hanging

6e. WOOLLY THOUGHTS continued