I was super excited when local Ottawa knitting artist Greta Grip (check out her Winterlude Urban Cozy Artist profile) invited me to assist her with her “knitting big” installation at a group show at Blink Gallery last month. The show was called “Pop Shop” and was poking fun at the National Gallery of Canada across the street and their summer blockbuster Pop Life.
Greta had created 14 ft knitting needles measuring 94 mm in diameter. She used long cardboard tubes and papier-maché that had been sanded down and then painted grey. For yarn, she ripped up large pieces of fabric and wrapped it into a ball.
A couple weeks before the show, we sat down with a needle each and whipped up a swatch of 10 stitches acrows and 10 rows down.
She added her name to the ends of the needles:
This was our finished swatch before the show:
Compare to the Guinness Book of World Records holder for largest knitting needles: Julia Hopson of Knit Wits, Penzance, Cornwall.
Julia knitted a tension square of ten stitches and ten rows in stocking stitch using knitting needles that were 6.5cm in diameter and 3.5 meters long. These were ten times the size of a standard 6.5mm and 35cm long knitting needle. The yarn was rope of 12mm in diameter. Does that mean Greta’s were a wee bit taller?
