A Little Tribute

The bicycle and the chicken warmer I wrote about yesterday were both entries in the Knitting Camp contest. The theme–pieces celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Schoolhouse Press–was inspiring. But given the frantic and fraught nature of my spring and summer, I figured I'd skip it because there'd be no time (and less money) to prepare something really good.

Then, as I was packing for the Provincetown trip, I got an idea for a project that would be portable, inexpensive, challenging, and attainable in a short time. I knit and mounted what is possibly the smallest-ever traveling exhibit of works by Elizabeth Zimmermann.



All three sweaters are "true" miniatures, meaning I followed Elizabeth's formulae exactly as written, including ribbing, sleeve decreases, underarm grafting, etc. The trickiest bit was working out new numbers for the Baby Surprise Jacket to keep it in scale with the others. The yarn is laceweight and sock reinforcing thread, all worked on size zero needles.

I displayed them in a glass-fronted box under the heading GENUS ZIMMERMANNII with individual Latin labels for each specimen. My Latin's shaky (to put it mildly), but the effect is pretty funny.

And to my immense surprise, when the votes were tallied–I won.

Here's a closer look.


Tunica mirabila infantis


Subucula mathematica, var. Retinaculorum


Tunica tomtena

All the patterns (for full-size garments) are available in Knitting Workshop. They were fun to make, though I will advise that if you wish to enjoy a nice, relaxing knit I advice against working a 12-stitch sleeve in laceweight on four needles.