people who are awesome: the first installment

For our first anniversary, my sweet and darling husband gave me a book entitled Knit Knit. It's a collection of biographies about interesting and talented people whose knitting challenges the great divide between "art" and "craft," a divide that sadly still exists. Though it's slowly falling away. I'd also like to point out that this same divide also happens to have some definite gender implications, but hey, that's for another day. Well, anyway, I was looking through it today (for a little inspiration), and I was thinking, well, damn, these people are awesome and I should blog about them. So, damn, I'm going to blog about them. I'd like to institute my inaugural post about people who are awesome with Lisa Anne Auerbach. And I know from first hand experience how awesome she is. Well, at least how awesome her work is . . .

Picture it: Aspen, November 2008. While on our honeymoon, the hub-ster and I were walking around town (like Howard Moon, man about town), and we noticed that several shops were showcasing sweaters in the front windows. We stopped to take a closer look at the intricate fair isle designs when I finally noticed *hello!* there was so much more to them. Each sweater contained two differing campaign slogans from history (some well known, some not so much, some inspiring and some scary). My expectations were completely completely thrown off. Here I was expecting to admire a geometric design, something without an opinion, without a story and as it turns out I'm completely wrong. There was a whole political debate going on in one sweater. And not only that, they were playing off ideas about the domestic and the political spheres, the past and the present, nostalgia and humor. With some freakin amazing fair isle patterns. So neat!

Here's a link to the sweaters on Lisa Anne Auerbach's website--I definitely recommend downloading the pdf, which shows all of the designs.

And and in case you are wondering, oh yes, I got her charted pattern book so that I can make my own political sweaters. Anyone for a "Praise the Lord and pass the Ammunition" sweater?

p.s. On a completely unrelated note . . .