Knitting is my least favorite medium because I wish to knit without making my work look like knitting. Since that is next to impossible, I find it extremely restricting.

I can paint in oils and make it look like a watercolor or a photograph, among other things.

I can write and make my work seem like I actually murdered a person or lived on the planet Mars, among other things.

Yet, when I knit, the stitches dictate my work, whether I use big needles or small needles.

A very early work, possibly 1997

Freedom dress, made of stash mercerized cotton thread for my eldest granddaughter Angelique who was in grade school at the time.

She is now 28 and is a practicing lawyer.

https://tonyperezphilippinesenchantedknits.blogspot.com/

Would have finished _The Golden Fleece_ last night, but felt drowsy and had to set it aside to sleep (the objective of my reading in bed).

Fascinated by the cones of thread that Ariadne showed Theseus (one into the labyrinth and one out of it). Whenever I come upon thread in any myth I cannot help but think of knitting and of friends who knit or handle yarn or thread. Thread in myths seems to be an archetype of salvation, of escape, of freedom, of life, and of death, and I am happy that I actually use it to knit artworks.

Been writing mostly during the pandemic, but my youngest sister Sylvia managed to create these during the lockdown in Sydney.

Knitting is an excellent method of creative visualization once your mind can operate on two, parallel levels: your work and your visualization, which then becomes a form of astral journeying.

It is also an excellent form of meditation once counting stitches becomes second nature to the knitter: the mind becomes no-mind, is empty of all thoughts, and leaves the work to be done all to the subconscious.

Needlework will always keep your mind sharp, pun intended.

It also calms one's nerves by means of the repetitious, compulsive, predictable-pattern movements that assure one that he is doing something constructive to prevent the passage of wasted time.

 

Angelique as Bubbles in handknitted, cotton, Powerpuff dress.

From the late 1990s through the mid-2000s I submitted 20 original handknitting designs to _The Philippine Star_. None of them were ever published, and none of them--photos, grid patterns, sketches, and instructions--were ever sent back to me,

This is a spare photo I found while cleaning out the old nursery room. Sadly I couldn't find any photos of Aubrey as Blossom (pink dress) and their compound playmate Almeth as Buttercup (green dress).

The girls were still in grade school at the time. And of course Professor Plutonium was a long way from retirement then.

Let your day unwind from a skein and wind into the ball of yarn that is ready to be knitted into a work of art.

Time is a work of knitted fabric. It is the past that is tangible reality, the present at the tip of your needles with your power to take them along conventional expectations, the breaking of rules, or other, innovative ways, the future a living pattern still in your mind.

Needlework is addictive because it marks both time and space.

You embroider your day with colored threads on fine fabric.

Do not bother to react to other knitters who try to put you down. Otherwise that would be equivalent to casting purls before swine. 

This piece is titled "Memories of a Sunday Afternoon". It was part of my 1991 fiber art exhibit _Cubao After Dark_ at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. I hand-knitted this piece out of stripped cotton fabric.

Collection of Barge Ramos

Sometimes I believe that human beings conceived of knitting while contemplating spider webs.

My Sister Sylvia's December 2016 Office Project

My sister Sylvia's December 2016 office project in Sydney, Australia:

What You Cannot See, You Can Feel

I've been knitting for more than 30 years now. While working on projects I noted that the yarn I used had a unique texture depending on what color it was. Pink yarn, for example, feels sticky to me, while red yarn feels rough and sandy. I asked my mother and my sisters if they noticed the same thing, but they said that they did not, or that they did not bother to, and so I kept quiet about it for some time.

In 2013, while I was teaching creative writing in my "Writing from The Heart" workshop at the Philippine National School for the Blind, I remembered my knitting and introduced a new exercise. I asked the participants to peel the paper covers off every crayon in their boxed sets. I then placed one crayon of the same color in their hands, a color at a time, and asked them to feel it while thinking of specific associations. I even allowed them to smell and lick each crayon.

At the end of the exercise I asked the class to raise the crayons that corresponded to my words--Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, and so on. NINETY-FIVE PERCENT of the participants successfully completed the exercise. The teacher-monitor who was observing the workshop was shocked speechless.

Try this exercise with crayons and with yarn. It heightens your powers of observation.

My Wuxia Scarf

Finished my wuxia scarf in December 2015 but couldn't find the right model to photograph it on. This full-length piece with a shaped hood was inspired by my viewing of The Return of the Condor Heroes a.k.a. The Romance of the Condor Heroes on Taiwan's GTV. This part of the trilogy is about the life (childhood through old age) of the wayward, maverick, and rebellious Yang Guo, a warrior who falls in love with his mentor, an enchantress, and marries her. He becomes an old man while the enchantress remains young forever.

The scarf I made looks nowhere near that worn by the character in the wuxia, but I definitely had him in mind while knitting it.

Photos by Jefferson Solayao

Never snap up new yarn and then frenziedly produce something with it to show others. You will end up looking at others' knitting like a housewife on a house-hunting show who enters a modest kitchen and whines, "I don't like it!" "I want modern!" "I want the appliances updated!" "I want stainless steel!" "I want granite!"--not realizing that stainless steel makes any kitchen look like a morgue and that "granite" is really liquid polymer fiberglass. Unbeknownst to the housewife, she is at the mercy of the house agent. The agent could walk her into ANY kitchen and either say "This was built in the 1970s" (and you can hear the housewife immediately reply "I want modern!" without thinking) OR say "This was recently renovated" (and you can hear the housewife immediately reply "Wow!" without thinking). Yarn promoters are like that real-estate agent.

Any housewife with character will want and need only appliances that WORK.

Therefore, when buying yarn, discern and discriminate. Don't ride on trends. Never fall for fancy names; such names could be disguising old yarn with new labels. Buy your yarn like buying exquisite textile. Consider setting it aside for several years. And then use it to create something after the yarn is no longer in stock and is no longer available to anyone. That way, no one else can copy your work.

Don't make your knitting timely. Make it TIMELESS.

My Sister Sylvia's 2015 Christmas Creations In Sydney, Australia

My sister Sylvia's team leader asked for help decorating the office for Christmas this year.

Sometimes it is a good idea to combine different thread textures in your work to prevent it from looking like it was made out of a kit.

All too often I have seen dinky scarves that look like table runners, piano keyboard covers, and throw rugs, no matter how complicated their patterns.