Book Review: Knitter's Magazine #20, Fall 1990

Title: Knitter’s Magazine #20, Fall 1990

Date: 1990

Publisher: XRX

Length: 88 pages

Illustrations: full-color photographs, mostly by Alexis Xenakis

Quote: “There’s something different in the way they approach life: time does not matter.”

And that’s why Andean folk knitting is one of those cultural traditions that’s unlikely ever to be fully appropriated in North America. Real Andean knitting is wacky and quirky, fun to do and fun to look at, and it takes so long to do that it can only ever be done for pleasure.

In 1990, Cynthia Gravelle LeCount had just come back from the Andes and documented some lovely, quirky patterns in a book that had made Andean-influenced, U.S.-style knitting fashionable...so it became a theme for Knitter’s magazine.

The “Knitting Universe” built by (Greek-born) Alexis Xenakis and (British-born) Elizabeth Lloyd Jones Zimmermann, and friends, was meant to be inclusive more than exploitative. The idea of the folk-knitting-inspired issues was meant to be lighthearted fun: U.S.designers paid tribute to one or more features of a style of folk textile art, not always knitting. The designers were inevitably accused of exploitation and "cultural appropriation." This magazine gives lots of attention to yarn produced in the Andes mountain countries and the social benefits of knitting with it, but there don’t seem to have been any Andean indigenous professional designers, and the samples of folk knitting photographed as inspiration show exactly why the magazine printed immensely simplified versions of these patterns...American knitters as a group just do not have the patience to knit intarsia designs with fifty different brilliant colors in sock-weight yarn. (Then again, if you’re on a long meditative retreat, you might consider trying to reproduce the “Some socks” that “have 25 colors in one round,” and look like something in an adult coloring book.)

So the message in this magazine is, “You can always experiment if you want to create your own unique folk knitting project that may take a year to finish. We have a magazine to get out on schedule, so here are our renditions of Andean patterns, and/or patterns influenced by pictures of South America, and/or basic patterns knitted up in beautiful Andean yarn...and photos from our tour, including some terribly cute alpacas.”

What you get patterns to make are: 

• ·          A classic cardigan, very easy—alpaca yarn is not at all hard to handle, but this was an encouraging introduction—with a simple border of Andean leaf motifs
• ·          A headband to knit in either fairisle or jacquard stitch. Andean knitters are famous for choosing jacquard, so that no two flowers, puppets, or animals in a row look the same, but that’s up to you.
• ·          A lace hood for which Priscilla Gibson-Roberts urged knitters to “spin your own” alpaca yarn, knowing that most of them would go down the local dime store and buy Dazzle-Aire acrylic to knit those little lace cat motifs.
• ·          A fairisle hood worked in lightweight yarn that really calls attention to the little Andean cat motifs.
• ·          A pullover with a multicolored Andean snake motif made easy by using multicolored yarn on a white background.
• ·          An Andean bird motif, probably originally worked in very lightweight yarn and only an inch or two high, repeated in jacquard around a hat, sock, or wristband, is worked in black on white, about four inches high, on a sweater. I wonder if anyone at all knitted that sweater!
• ·          Lily Chin offers a very elaborate technique for texturing two jackets that are partly handwoven and partly knitted.
• ·          A simple patchwork pullover with cable-stitch turtle motifs, and other cable motifs.
• ·          A slipover vest made in simple stripes of alpaca yarns.
• ·          A sweater inspired by those Andean bags made with little “paws,” tiny pockets dangling outside the bag, “embellished” with the flaps, buttons, and tassels that originally helped those pockets contain small objects.
• ·          A family of Icelandic-Canadian-style jackets with little llamas parading around the shoulders. (I made one in alpaca yarn.)
• ·          A “Pop Hat” with little jacquard puppets and pompoms.
• ·          A jacquard-striped jacket to knit sidewise. Helene Rush did not use leftovers from Nancy Bush’s classic cardigan, a few pages earlier, but the colors are similar enough that I planned for that. (True confession: I used Wool-Ease rather than real alpaca.)
• ·          A bobble-loaded Aran-stitch pullover with cape collar. (It looks cute on the model...for actual use, I’d omit at least 95% of the bobbles.)
• ·          A classic round shawl knitted in handspun Colombian silk.
• ·          A sweater to embroider or even bead in colors and motifs suggesting the fabulous “Birdwing” butterflies of South America. They’re big as bats and often have bright blue or green wings.The butterflies embroidered on the model are smaller, more recognizable to North American eyes.
• ·          A bag, knitted in plain cotton.

There are also appeals from Andean-based charities, and an article about Mount Sajama, whose high plains’ agricultural limitations were summed up in a legend about why the mountain tolerates only llamas and alpacas and, grudgingly, humans who look after them.

This was one of the best loved issues of Knitter's. Prices have risen since printing. To buy it here, send $10 per copy, $5 per package, plus $1 per online payment to the appropriate address. That's a little more than the lowest price currently showing on Amazon, but if you add another dozen books to the $5 package our prices become very competitive.