Friday 11 January 2013

If Mini-Me Took Up Knitting...


If you take your knitting everywhere and you're getting tired of stuffing the back of an adult-sized sweater and a 100g skein of worsted into your already bulging shoulder bag or backpack, you might try scaling down your knitting projects, as Althea Crome has done. Crome is a miniature knitter, and her projects are so tiny they'd fit into your pocket and still leave room for your cellphone.





Apparently it wasn't enough of a challenge for Crome to merely make simple items on a two-inch scale, as her work is not only small but amazingly complex and detailed. Sometimes she makes replicas of historical costumes as with the Queen Elizabeth I sweater above, or recreates famous paintings or other works of art, or depicts entire scenes, such as an underwater seascape or Santa and all his eight tiny reindeer flying over a house.





You can visit Crome's website, Bug Knits, to see galleries of her work. Crome also knitted some items for the 2009 3D stop-motion movie Coraline, including a sweater for the title character.






Crome talks about her work and demonstrates her "extreme knitting" in this promotional video for Coraline.





If you want to give miniature knitting a shot yourself, you can buy some of Crome's patterns to help you get started, and I wish you the best. All I can think of when I see Crome in action is the time I decided to make ten Barbie outfits as part of a Christmas present for one of my nieces. I got four items done before I cracked and COULDN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE. Crome's patience and self-control are astounding.

I bet Althea Crome's children have the most exquisitely dressed Barbies ever.

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