WWW: A very valuable swift, scarves go global, knit along with Mme Defarge

Rare, beautiful, valuable and very, very useful.

So very cool… a recent episode of the Antiques Roadshow featured a rare hand-carved whalebone and ivory swift, appraised at a value of USD$15,000-20,000. The family who owns it tells the appraiser that they keep it in a curio cabinet, and occasionally take it out with the express intention of confusing their friends.

Nice to see craft books getting some attention in the "serious" press… the Washington Post has published a roundup of interesting craft books published in 2011.

BBC Radio 4 has produced a new radio play version of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, the book that features the famous knitting Mme Defarge… listen to the online stream, or download a podcast version.

Knit Global!

A fun story about a knitter from Leeds, UK, who is close to fulfilling her goal of having one of her handknit scarves in every country in the world. She's hit 132 countries, and that total is growing thanks to friends, family and members of her community who take her scarves with them when they travel.

Lillian Phillips who is 92 years old and nearly blind, knits the scarves from memory.

That is pretty big...

A coat made from over 8,000 knitted squares has taken the Guinness Record for the world's largest jacket. (There really is a Guinness record for everything, isn't there?)