Knitting Advent Calendar 6: Errol Flynn

Hm. They say Errol Flynn was "extremely handsome and virile". I'm not sure how this smarmy grin fits into that. And in my book, a gentleman does not wear his trousers held up by a piece of string.



Slightly boring jumper too... but I thought I'd give you some male eye candy if this kind of thing floats your boat.

Knitting Advent Calendar 5: Claudette Colbert

The blurb for this pattern describes Mme Colbert as a "superb clothes horse" with a "strangely feline face", somewhat unflatteringly.

I really love the strong shoulders on this cardigan, no wonder they were keen on it in the 80s (and now, probably!).

Knitting Advent Calendar 4: Sailor Suit

Today, in honour of the Bristol Harbour Harlot's Roller Derby bout against South West Angels of Terror, a "smart" 80's Sailor Suit!



I swear there is a nipple in this picture. And would it have killed her to dry her hair?

Knitting Advent Calendar 3: Vilma Banky

A lesser known starlet this week! But with an interesting jumper. This has an embroidered Union Jack and some sort of colonial flag? A weird choice considering she was Hungarian and worked in Hollywood. She was one of the actresses whose careers were ended by the "talkies" as apparently Hungarian accents weren't considered sexy, like French, or German (right?).

Knitting Advent Calendar 2: Gary Cooper

Gary Cooper today! Nice Christmas jumper, too. According to the blurb he "exuded from a screen a powerful sexuality". Can't disagree, really.

Knitting Advent Calendar 1: Joan Crawford

It's December again which can only mean one thing - I find pictures of celebrities wearing knitwear and post them here for your delectation.

This year is going to be less mocking and more admiring in tone, as I managed to get my hand on a book called Hollywood Knits. It was published in the 80s, but all the photos are from much earlier in the century. The author Bill Gibb dug out photos of "Old Hollywood" film stars posing in glamorous jumpers and then reverse engineered the patterns from the photos. Amazing!

Kicking things off is the beautiful Joan Crawford:



I especially like the sequinned braces. I would completely wear this entire outfit (maybe minus the unflattering gathered skirt waist).

A group effort and a first nemesis

There's a new-ish shop on North Street called Paper Village, which is basically everything I would have done if I'd ever actually got round to opening a shop. It sells some cheap acrylic wool in many colours, various fun craft supplies and some interesting artwork, and also runs craft workshops for kids and adults.

Vic, who runs the shop, instigated a little group yarn bombing project under the banner of the Bristol Knitivists, to coincide with the South Bristol Art Trail. It had a loose theme of "gardens", which included a cactus, lots of flowers, and some birds and bees. I contributed two bike rack cosies, a "grassy" one and a multi-textured one.

Here are some photos of the day:

As you can see, it was a big success with passers-by.

Unfortunately, most of it did not last very long. On monday evening, I cycled past the installation and saw a man take down our work. I went over to ask him why, and he said "the environmental officer came down today.". When I asked him to elaborate, he claimed that "you're not to vandalise the street furniture". I really should have pressed him further as to a) why this "environmental officer" had come down and what his name was b) how what we had done constituted vandalism ("ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable") and c) whether he, personally, had been given the task of removing the offending pieces by this presumably fictional council representative. But for some reason I decided to leave it at that at the time.

As you can probably tell, I am quite annoyed about this. In principle, I know that this is part of doing any sort of guerilla/public installation - if you are assuming the right to install your work somewhere public, you're also accepting other people's right to take it down again. I just really can't accept the sort of petty small-mindedness that seemed to be the motivation for this.

Anyway - one of the bike rack cosies lasted slightly longer by virtue of being slightly down the road, and it was there during Upfest which happened a couple of weeks later, and we got plenty of positive reactions for our work, too, including an "I saw you" in Venue (Thursday, 26 May 2011)!