Knoggin Knitting all happened because of my Grandma and her infinite patience.
Each summer I would watch her knit something spectacular and feeling inspired I would ask her if I could try too. We would sit in the shade under the awning of the cottage beside each other, the sound of needles clicking and the occasional outcry from me when I dropped yet another stitch. Although she tried patiently to teach me how to knit, I unfortunately never managed to get the knack despite all her efforts. Years later, I did however inherit her knitting needles and that inspired me to valiantly make an effort to finally learn. I could feel the power of Grandma-ness within the needles and I persevered! I started with scarves of various widths and lengths, the bigger the needles the faster the results – my kind of knitting! Then I moved on to using round looms, similar to “corking” to make tubes. Now I could make toques! Making 3D shapes with needles was still an elusive goal to me. I kept trying.
I happened to make a rather long tube one day out of 100% wool, I cinched off the top intending it to be an extra long toque. It seemed a bit long so I decided to throw it into the wash to see what would happen. My 1 foot wide, 2.5 foot long tube turned into a 4 inch wide, 8 inch long tube! Ack! Too small for a toque….. wait a minute, could that be….. yes, it is…… It’s a hand puppet! Just push in the mouth and voila! I started playing with different starting lengths and cinching in the top of the tube.
The “fulled” wool was a beautiful texture and thickness after the felting process. I began making extra sheets of it in different colours to add various features like ears, arms, legs, tails or even antlers. I even tried needlefelting with much trepidition – the warning on those needles are enough to make anyone leave the light on at night with visions of lockjaw running through their head!
With all this experimentation, I ended up with quite a few puppets hanging about our house and my husband asked me what I planned on doing with them all. *shrug* Keep them? He suggested perhaps selling some. After much deliberation and shyness (who on Earth would want MY stuff besides ME?), I relented and opened up a shop on Etsy. I had a few sales. I sold a few locally around town as well – random people would see me working on them on the subway to and from work and want to buy them! I felt vindicated!
I feel that I am still exploring my fuzzy world of felted creatures and what I can create.
All of my creations at Knoggin Knitting are designed by me (usually on the fly without a pattern). Each one is unique and made with 100% wool. It is knitted, then felted by washing with baby detergent for sensitive skin (cuz I have very sensitive skin), then I either hand sew various notions or I needle felt features. I like to embroider with wool if the creature I am making is for another creature that doesn’t know that swallowing buttons is a bad thing. If I do use buttons for eyes I like to use mismatched sizes to give a quirky look.
Knoggin was named because SIr Isaac Newton was hit on the knoggin with an apple and had a great idea. I wasn’t hit by an apple but thanks to my Grandma, I finally starting using my knoggin. (I’ll just use the apple as part of my logo.)
