You wake up one morning to find that your wool sweater – the one you spent months knitting yourself – has been put through the dryer on high heat. It now fits your cat. If you’re like most people, your reaction is: ‘Oh no! How did this happen? My favourite sweater!’ But if you’re a devotee of micro-knitting, the most niche branch of knitting, you might think it’s brilliant.
For micro-knitters, the Holy Grail is to create knitted objects so small they can hardly be seen. Their obsession has bubbled up on social media at a moment when the mainstream movement is to make everything bigger: giant, chunky-knit blankets, sloppy cardigans you could snuggle with. But they don’t do big things; their craft is counterculture. When you need information on a Knitting Kit, visit a site such as www.woolcouturecompany.com/collections/knitting-kits
It usually takes the form of teeny-tiny garments for dolls or even smaller than teeny-tiny, like earrings and pendants made out of knits. Fans often post pictures online with a magnified pin beside the object to show perspective, otherwise people don’t believe how small it is. They think there must be some trickery involved. But there isn’t any trickery, just lots of patience.
Some people think it’s pointless. Why spend all those hours making something so small you can’t see it? There are lots of good reasons for those who are adrenaline junkies or who love a challenge. In part, micro knitters like the idea of miniaturising things normally found on the macro-knitting scale, like the tricky Irish cable or the complicated Fair Isle snowflake – because the smaller they are, the more impressive they become.
And it’s not just clothing. When scaled down, anything knitted – even just an inch of regular knitting – looks more like jewellery. The thrill and complexity have drawn adherents from far and wide, from knitters eager to learn new techniques (the biggest ones being tension and control) to fashion designers interested in bespoke garments to aficionados wanting to pay homage to a style that is now in high fashion.
But micro-knitting is also a meditation. Most people think that mass production and consumerism should be fast, fast, fast but these folks say: ‘No, I’ll take the slow route.’ This micro-knitting thing is so big online, it seems likely to go on and become more popular.