Anna Bauer - Alterknit Rebellion: Radical Patterns for Creative Knitters

Anna Bauer

www.davidandcharles.com

With a basic pattern in hand, you yourself compose your project. The beanie with bobbles is knitted to the Scalloped-edge beanie pattern.

As a knitter you will already know that there is much more to making something with yarn than the sticks and string in your hands. You bring something to your work that no one else can; your voice, your creativity, your hopes, ideas, strengths, and lessons learned. In all of that your knitting becomes a unique part of who you are as it grows. Your voice is in the fabric.

Anna Bauer recognised the power of this when she fell in love with Hnsestrik, a three-part Danish book series by Kirsten Hofstetter. The books encouraged people to rebel against traditional knits and the big hungry yarn companies who would only allow you to buy a pattern if you bought the specific yarn required to go with it. The idea was to throw off following the pattern, and be proud of not fitting into the mainstream sizes, colours and styles: to think outside of the boxes big money wants to put us in. It became a movement all of its own.

Whats great about giving people the power to go off-pattern, and start looking at their WIPs as something that is so much more, is that it connects us like many wildly creative things do. When you find the confidence to show who you really are, to be brave with your ideas and to tell your own story it brings you closer to the rest of the world. People may see something in your work that lights something up in them, or a similarity that makes them feel less alone. In todays climate this has more importance than ever.

This book is a testament to Annas love of the movement, her commitment to the wonder that is knitting with colour, creativity, and character, and her passion for every creator to find their own voice in every stitch they make.

The patterns here are a starting point for great stitched leaps in which ever directions your heart, head, and hands take you. Anna is offering you the tools to begin falling in love with what you can do, and what you can share with others. In her own love story she is really encouraging us to tell our own.

Happy knitting outside the box!

Lauren OFarrell

(aka Deadly Knitshade)

Celebrate the seventies with the Slipover Vest.

a love story

Of course, Id knitted before, but when I came across hnsestrik, my knitting quickly escalated. With an enthusiasm that bordered on obsession, knitting started to take up much of my waking hours and sometimes my nightly dreams. There was something about it that felt so very familiar. Suddenly I was reminded of flickering super 8mm films of myself when I was little wearing a jumper with rows of houses and birds and enormously wide sleeves. A hnsestrik jumper. Later, I found that small jumper back at my childhood home.

This book is a personal tribute to hnsestrik and the desire for creative freedom. The book contains instructional patterns for 12 basic models and a large number of borders and repeated patterns. In several of the patterns you work with your own personal measurements and you get to choose what patterns and borders you use in your knitting.

Knitting with freedom is liberating, to choose your own new colours and patterns where the garments surface is a blank canvas for you to fill with what you like and want. To let your desire and, to a certain extent, chance dictate. Following a well-thought-out and well-written knitting pattern feels safe and, if youre lucky, youll pick up a few new tricks to add to your repertoire, theres absolutely nothing wrong with that. I also sometimes knit to patterns.

Often, Im really pleased with the result, but the experience isnt the same. We can compare it to a journey. Knitting to a pattern is like an all-inclusive trip. You know exactly what youll get, but youll have no surprises. Knitting how you want is more like backpacking, you choose what you feel like doing as you go along.

I think its time to set knitting free again! Embrace the unpredictable, let go of the barrier and head out onto thin ice! You can always rip it back if it doesnt feel good. Knitting can be so much: a political standpoint, relaxation, kinship and, not least, a voyage of discovery in your own creative space. Let the journey begin.

It was in the mid-1970s when the Dane Kirsten Hofsttter wanted to publish a book on how knitting could work as a tool in the political struggle. Since she herself was active in the womens movement she took her idea to the political publishing house Den Rde Hane (The Red Rooster), where she was rejected because knitting didnt have anything to do with politics. She then started her own publishing house Hnsetryk instead and entitled her first book Hnsestrik.

The book gave its name to the style and hnsestrik became a term in its own right, becoming a model for a whole generation of knitters. The colourful borders with different patterns and the garments woven-in message: the closed fist in the middle of the female gender sign, the peace sign together with patterns originating from traditional folk art from all over the world became characteristic of the style. She later published more books along the same theme.

Hofsttter encouraged knitting with freedom as a political and personal standpoint against the consumer society, but also as a way of freeing oneself from the needlework of previous generations with its many rules.

The 1970s were a political time. Moving to the countryside, growing your own food, making your own clothes and trying to be self-sufficient were part of the green wave. Now, in a way, the green movement is back, but as waves remind us that not every wave is exactly the same, this updated green wave is more urban. We are leaning towards urban farming, fermenting, sour dough, microbreweries and composting on a small scale.

Hnsestrik has been picked up in recent times and given new life in guerrilla craft, still with strong colours and strong political elements. An example of this is the American artist and photographer Lisa Anne Auerbach, who started knitting when she gave up her dark room. With Auerbach, too, the political message is central, which she believes is reinforced when worn as clothes. In 2012, she put on an exhibition at Malm Konsthall, at which all personnel wore jumpers with her message on. Another example is the Swedish artist Lina Niklasson, who, humorously and accurately, uses her knitted work to make contemporary comments.

Remember there are traditions in knitting, but there are no rules.