Elizabeth Zimmermann
An influential knitting pattern designer, teacher, and writer, Elizabeth Zimmermann advocated knitting techniques to speed progress and simplify pattern creation. She enthusiastically championed Continental knitting, where the working yarn is carried in the left hand, as opposed to the English or American style where the working yarn is carried in the right hand. She also advocated knitting in the round on circular needles rather than back and forth on straight needles. Zimmerman encouraged knitters to understand the mathematical and geometric concepts inherent in knitting.
Zimmermann and her family moved from the UK to New York, eventually settling in Wisconsin. There, she established Schoolhouse Press, arguably the most important knitting publisher of the 20th century. Zimmermann's daughter Meg Swansen took up the reins of Schoolhouse Press upon her mother's death.
“(knitting while on a motorcycle)"For several years she knitted in secret (my father would not approve; she was to concentrate on motorcycling and LEAN into the curves, etc), and used a small circular needle (socks and mittens) in order to keep the knitting in her pocket until they were under way; then she leaned back slightly so Gaffer couldn't feel the movement of her hands.On the interstate one day, they were slowly passing a semi and my father happened to see the truck driver laugh and point out my mother's knitting to his passenger. Whoops-”
“I know that spinning sets me in a trance; it soothes me and charges my batteries at the same time. When times are tough I sit down to spin during the news-broadcasts, with therapeutic results.”
“But unvented - ahh! One un-vents something; one unearths it; one digs it up, one runs it down in whatever recesses of the eternal consciousness it has gone to ground. I very much doubt if anything is really new when one works in the prehistoric medium of wool with needles. The products of science and technology may be new, and some of them are quite horrid, but knitting? In knitting there are ancient possibilities; the earth is enriched with the dust of the millions of knitters who have held wool and needles since the beginning of sheep. Seamless sweaters and one-row buttonholes; knitted hems and phoney seams - it is unthinkable that these have, in mankind's history, remained undiscovered and unknitted. One likes to believe that there is memory in the fingers; memory undeveloped, but still alive.”
“Really, all you need to become a good knitter are wool, needles, hands, and slightly below-average intelligence. Of course superior intelligence, such as yours and mine, is an advantage.”
“Pass by the synthetic yarn department, then, with your nose in the air. Should a clerk come out with the remark that All Young Mothers In This Day and Age (why can't they save their breath and say "now"?) insist on a yarn which can be machine-washed and machine-dried, come back at her with the reply that one day, you suppose, they will develop a baby that can be machine-washed and -dried. ”