Elizabeth Zimmermann

Elizabeth Zimmermann (August 9, 1910–November 30, 1999) was a British-born knitter known for revolutionizing the modern practice of knitting through her books and instructional series on American public television.

Though knitting back and forth on rigid straight needles was the norm, she advocated knitting in the round using flexible circular needles to produce seamless garments and to make it easier to knit intricate patterns. She also advocated the Continental knitting method, claiming that it is the most efficient and quickest way to knit. During World War II, German or continental knitting fell out of favor in the UK and US due to its association with Germany. Most English books on knitting today are in the English or American style. Elizabeth Zimmerman helped to re-introduce continental style knitting to the United States.

Biography

Born in England (Elizabeth Lloyd-Jones), she attended art schools in Switzerland and Germany. Her autobiographical "Digressions" in the book "Knitting Around" reprinted many of her original artworks alongside the text. Zimmermann learned to knit first from her mother and aunts (English Style) and then later from her Swiss governess (German or Continental Style).

EZ (as she is affectionately known among knitters) eventually immigrated to the United States with her new husband, German brewery master Arnold Zimmermann, finally settling in Wisconsin in a converted schoolhouse. The schoolhouse would become home to Schoolhouse Press, a mail-order knitting business still based in the schoolhouse and run by her daughter Meg Swansen.

Zimmermann is credited with knitting the first example of an Aran sweater seen in an American knitting magazine "(Vogue Knitting"), however that pattern was published in 1958 and a collection of patterns for men's and women's Aran sweaters with matching socks and mittens, entitled "Hand Knits from the Aran Islands," was published in a 1956 issue of Woman's Day Magazine. According to her posthumously-published book "The Opinionated Knitter", a yarn-company editor altered Zimmermann's circular knitting instructions for a Fair Isle Yoke pullover after she submitted the sweater, rendering it in the back-and-forth "flat" knitting method that was more popular among American knitters at the time. This alteration led Zimmermann to begin to publish her own instructions. 'Wool Gatherings' was born.

US television career

Zimmermann's PBS knitting series is still available on VHS and DVD. In one episode, a police officer (and friend of the family) pulled Zimmermann and her husband over for "knitting without a license." (Always knitting, she'd even developed the ability to knit while on the back of her husband's motorcycle). In "The Opinionated Knitter", Zimmermann's daughter Meg notes that while her mother wanted to call her first book The Opinionated Knitter, her publishers changed it to "Knitting Without Tears". However, the former perhaps best expresses Zimmermann's knitting philosophy. In all her published works (print and video), she encouraged knitters to experiment and develop their own patterns.

Her "EPS" (Elizabeth's Percentage System) is still widely used by designers: it consists of a mathematical formula to determine how many stitches to cast on for a sweater, given that the sleeves and body are usually proportionate no matter what yarn or gauge is used. Other patterns and techniques for which she is well known are the so-called "Pi Shawl," a circular shawl that Zimmermann claimed was formed by regularly spaced increases based on Pi -- as she said in her book [http://books.google.com/books?id=_Cwi0cOjKFcC&pg=PA71&dq=knitters+almanac+shawl&ei=NmR5SLPKForSjgG-msSdDw&sig=ACfU3U1gvadrLqHj2EKK4ZioBUV7yjYFxQ#PPA73,M1 Knitter's Almanac,] "the geometry of the circle hing [es] on the mysterious relationship of the circumference of a circle to its radius. A circle will double its circumference in infinitely themselves-doubling distances, or, in knitters' terms, the distance between the increase-rounds, in which you double the number of stitches, goes 3, 6, 12, 24 and so on." The shawl is not, however, based on Pi in any special way, but only on the property common to all two-dimensional shapes in Euclidean geometry that all dimensions increase by the same factor at the same rate; the circular shape is simply created by regularly spacing the increases). Zimmermann is also known for 'i-cord' (or 'idiot cord'), and the "Baby Surprise Jacket," which is knit completely flat and then folded, origami-style, to create a nicely shaped jacket.

She also founded a series of Knitting Camps that continue to this day under her daughter's direction.

Zimmermann was the first knitter to be honored with a full obituary and article in the "New York Times" titled "E. Zimmermann Is Dead at 89; Revolutionized Art of Knitting." It appeared on Sunday, December 12 1999. Her motto "Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises," continues to inspire modern day aspiring designers and knitters.

Bibliography

*cite book
title = Knitting Without Tears
first = Elizabeth
last = Zimmermann
year = 1971
edition = 1995 Fireside paperback
publisher = Simon & Schuster
location = New York
id = ISBN 0-684-13505-1, LCC|TT820.Z55
*cite book
title = Knitter's Almanac
first = Elizabeth
last = Zimmermann
year = 1974
edition = 1981 Dover paperback
publisher = Dover Publications
location = New York
id = ISBN 0-486-24178-5, LCC|TT820.Z54
*cite book
title = Knitting Workshop
first = Elizabeth
last = Zimmermann
date = December 1, 1981
publisher = Schoolhouse Press
location = Wisconsin
id = ISBN 0-942018-00-1
*cite book
title = Knitting Around
first = Elizabeth
last = Zimmermann
date = June 1, 1989
edition = June 2001 reprint
publisher = Schoolhouse Press
location = Wisconsin
id = ISBN 0-942018-03-6
*cite book
title = The Opinionated Knitter: Elizabeth Zimmermann Newsletters 1958-1968
first = Elizabeth
last = Zimmermann
date = January 30, 2005
publisher = Schoolhouse Press
location = Wisconsin
id = ISBN 0-942018-26-5

External links

* [http://www.schoolhousepress.com Schoolhouse Press] Started by Elizabeth Zimmermann in 1959
* [http://knittinguniverse.com/knitters/articles/elizabeth/index.html Remembering Elizabeth...] from [http://knittinguniverse.com/ Knitting Universe Magazine]
* [http://www.newschoolknittingexhibition.org The Influence of Elizabeth Zimmermann and School House Press] An online catalog of the University of Wisconsin Design Center October 2006 Exhibition.