EZ videos

I rented two "Knitting Workshop with Elizabeth Zimmermann" videos from the library, and really enjoyed watching them. She is such a cool cucumber, she doesn't make anything seem complicated. Cutting your knitting or making fancy seamless shoulder shaping is as complicated as casting on a stitch! I picked up a few interesting tidbits - she doesn't make a slipnot when she starts casting on, just like me! She purls using the Norwegian purl, and she knits very loosely. Fascinating. The videos were pleasantly homemade - she talks to Meg Swansen off-camera, drops needles and tangles her wool all the time. One of my favorite parts is when she is talking about putting pockets into sweaters as an afterthought, and just on a whim cuts the vest she's wearing to show how she would unravel the wool and put a pocket in there! She has a bit of "heretic" in her, and says "they said I wouldn't be able to put shoulder shaping into a seamless sweater, so I showed them" and "for whatever reason they wanted a seam down the side of a sweater, so I made a phony one." I like how she doesn't talk down to the person on the other side of the television, nor makes the lessons too cutesy and non-serious.