WWW: Real Body Models; a Visit to the Wool Scourer’s; Helpful Knitting Cats

From the University of Southampton Knitting Reference Library.

University of Southampton Knitting Reference Library: I’ve written about this amazing collection of vintage knitting books before, but it never fails to bring joy, education, and amusement. It’s worth a scroll, just to admire the beautiful cover artwork of the older knitting books. (Some of the more recent books covers are great, too, but in a totally different way – 1970s and 1980s hairstyles never fail to amuse.)

We’ve seen some of these before, but I enjoyed Mental Floss magazine’s roundup of 10 impressive yarnbombing projects.

image copyright Rachel Atkinson

I was excited to read about the launch of Rachel Atkinson’s Daughter of a Shepherd, a new yarn company out of the UK using fleeces from her father’s flock of Hebridean sheep. I particularly enjoyed the gorgeous photos on this blog post  about one of the key steps in turning fleeces into handknitting yarn: ‘At the Scourer’s‘. More on the project here.

A real person, with real proportions and measurements. Image from the Tracing Real Body Models website.

Fantastic: The ‘Tracing Real Body Models‘ project. Clothing designers often use pre-made illustrations of bodies, known as ‘croquis‘, as the basis for the design sketches. The problem is that these croquis are typically built to fashion model body standards: unrealistically tall and thin. This project aims to produce croquis based on actual people, with actual measurements, taken from photographs.

Also happy-making: #helpfulknittingcats on Instagram.

Kicked off by Ann Shayne, this is all about showing the world how much our cats enjoy participating in our craft. My old cat Nathan used to enjoy batting at the ends of my needles – it’s because of him I gave up working on straights and switched to circulars.

Got a cat who “helps” with your knitting? Post your cat “helping” with your knitting with the hashtag #helpfulknittingcats. #catsofinstagram #cats #helpfulcats

A photo posted by Ann Shayne (@annshayne) on Mar 16, 2016 at 5:19am PDT