My best knitting Christmas present was one I gave myself - I ordered Debbie New's Unexpected Knitting a while back but kept it until Christmas to open. It is an amazing book and one I can't recommend highly enough. With the current emphasis on non-challenging knitting this book goes a million miles in the opposite direction and challenges knitters to think about knitting and knitted fabrics in a much different way. In fact there is one chapter, Virtual Knitting, that isn't actually knitting but replicates knitted fabric. I often don't think of my knitting as terribly creative but this is the best book I've seen on creativity and the design process in knitting. Some of her knitted works of art are truly things the knitting world has never seen before.
I plan to start something using the freeform knitting technique this weekend. Thank God for Debbie New's remarkable intelligence and for Schoolhouse Press for publishing this book - there's no way other knitting book publishers would even consider attempting such a book. I read through this book today and had some incredible thoughts and ideas - there is not a single technique in here that doesn't excite me and start me imagining whole new ways of looking at knitting. Wow - this is easily the most exciting knitting book I've seen in a decade or two.
Back to our Santa Fe Tour. Santa Fe is easily one of the most important art marketplaces in the country. Canyon Road, billed America's Arts and Crafts Road, is littered with galleries. I thought I'd take some photos of some of the outdoor art on display. First we have DH with a large metal rabbit.
And perhaps an errant reindeer.
The cougar on the roof of the Canyon Road florist is sporting a Santa hat.
And my favorite piece of Canyon Road art - a massive rabbit done in some sort of concrete mixture.
