Hirst Catherine - Knitted Letters: Make Personalized Gifts and Accents with Creative Typography-Based Projects

First published in the United States of America in 2013 by Chronicle Books LLC.

Copyright 2013 by Quintet Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-4521-1572-6 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4521-3954-8 (epub, mobi)

Text: Catherine Hirst
Colorwork charts: Erssie Major
Project designers: Claire Crompton, Liz Gregory,
Catherine Hirst, Meghan Fernandes, Erssie Major,
Carol Meldrum
Designer: Anna Gatt
Photographer: Lydia Evans
Art Director: Michael Charles
Editorial Director: Donna Gregory
Publisher: Mark Searle

Chronicle Books
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

In a vase full of knitting needles on my studio table, I have a pair of casein needles that belonged to my grandmother. She was the one who taught me to knit and crochet, and even though shes been gone for more than twenty years, every time I pick up my needles I feel like Im communing with her and with all the women in my family who practiced these arts in generations past. I make the same motions and create the same stitches as my grandmother and her mother before her did.

Ive knitted (or crocheted) nearly every day of my life since my grandmother first taught me at age seven, and now I teach other people how to do these crafts. I feel like Im putting just a tiny bit of good back into the world every time someone comes away from a lesson with a newfound understanding of how to wield these sticks and string andmagically!make garments, accessories, and beautiful things for their home.

Often Im trying to communicate something with my knitting, which is why I was attracted to this project. I loved the idea of being able to incorporate words and messages into my knitting and customize various projects to my exact specifications. The charts that have been designed for this book are remarkable: Clearly readable when translated into knitting, they are easy to follow and really do impart the essence of each font style thats being celebrated.

Knitting is a traditional means of communication, much like the oral tradition of storytelling that predated the emergence of written language, the printing press, and movable type. This book presents a union of typography and knitting, combining a relatively modern means of communication with a traditional craft that was passed down orally from parent to child for over a thousand yearsthere are examples of knitted socks from Egypt dating to circa 1000 CE .

I hope that Knitted Letters will act as both a resource and an inspiration for incorporating professional-looking typography into your knitting projects. This book contains colorwork charts for nine different typeface styles and also gives instructions for twenty-four knitting projects. Guidance is also given on how to personalize your knitting with your own chosen letters and words, using evenly proportioned and spaced characters to achieve effective, polished results. By providing and demonstrating well-designed typography in yarn form, this book will help you expand your knitting design palette beyond what you ever thought possible.

Using letters and words in your knitting is the ideal means of personalizing your projects, either as gifts for a loved one or as a stylish treat for yourself. The Baby Blanket .

By illustrating more decorative and elaborate typeface styles such as Script . One of the central design problems typographers face when designing a font is the complex trade-off between attractiveness and decoration on the one hand and the clarity and utility of the typeface on the other. Elements such as serifs, and the variation of line thickness within a given character, can aid the reader in following the flow of a word or sentence; equally, an ornate font, which is initially difficult to make out, can arrest the readers attention and give a specific aesthetic impression. Similarly, with knitting, using an edging, mirrored decreases, or even a specific finishing technique can all change the overall effect of the piece. In Knitted Letters you are given all the tools you need to make effective style choices for your knitted projects.

(Knitting) is such a communication-based tradition. Knitting is generally done by someone for somebody...

David Revere McFadden, chief curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, on the exhibition Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting, 2007

The history of knitting as a form of communication is long and varied, from specific instances of knitting codes or secret messages, to the more general idea of knitting as an art form that brings people together. Whether a knitter is making a blanket for a newborn baby as an expression of love, or yarn-bombing a bicycle rack to bring a burst of color and creativity to the neighborhood, that knitter is sending a message to others. In this way, knitting is similar to typography, and the purpose of this book is to combine the two so that knitters can use their work as a personalized means of expression.

In Charles Dickenss A Tale of Two Cities, the character Madame DeFarge knits, in a secret code, a hit list of the names of the aristocrats who will be condemned to death in the French Revolution. Other textiles arts, such as quilting, embroidery, and cross-stitch, have also been used to conceal hidden messages. These days, textile artists are experimenting with incorporating binary and Morse codes into knitting. Knitting is binary, in that it consists of only two stitchesknit and purl. Using simple sequencing, a message can be hidden in a piece of knitting that only someone who knows the secret key can decode. As these examples demonstrate, the ability to transmit information is intrinsic to knitting, and the use of typography in knitting patterns is only one of several ways of communicating with stitches.

When knitting letters and words, the knitter communicates through choices of font, color, and words. The sweet cursive script featured in the Girls Dress project is chosen specifically for clarity and readability. One font is primarily decorative, the other utilitarian. The idea is that each typeface featured within this book is appropriate for different types of knitted projects, so you can customize the project not just with literal words, but also with choices of style.

A compromise often needs to be reached to balance utilitarian functions with the desired decorative flourishes and the pieces overall attractiveness. Perhaps the fundamental difficulty in both knitting and typography design is the trade-off between decoration and utilitystriving for beauty while maintaining legibilityand designing letter charts specifically for knitting presents its own set of challenges. Erssie Major, the designer who worked on all the beautiful colorwork charts in this book, had to ensure that the charts were both clear and as small as possible in order to fit onto knitted projects, that they fit knit proportions exactly (since knitted stitches are wider than they are tall), and that they included enough fine detailing to give each typeface a clear and distinct character.

There are fonts from many typeface categories included in the book, such as serif, sans serif, script, slab serif, and black letter. We hope you enjoy creating custom projects of your own and make use of the complete alphabet charts for every font included in the back of the book. Thank you for reading, and happy knitting!