WTF Knits by Gabrielle Grillo and Lucy Sweet, is one of the low-hanging fruit of the knitting book world, sometimes it is easy to mock patterns and to find them ridiculous. To me some of these fall into 3 categories, Art, actually clever if you think about it and lastly they're strange adventures in using yarn.
It seems to be coming from a place where yarn is only good if it's used for a utiliarian project and not in sculptural projects and as some of the profits from this are going to charity it would have been hard for many of the copyright owners to refuse use of their photos for use here.
Much of it is stuff I'd never knit but I found some of it more clever than WTF. It did annoy me to see the TitBits in here. These are pieces knit for women with Breast Cancer as soft, caring, replacement prosthesis while they're healing and need something soft and the idea that someone would do that for me appeals, also the knitted falopian tubes are being used in activism.
Much of the garments are insane and I couldn't see myself wearing or making them but Haute Couture is insane, the yearly fashion design student catwalk is full of garments that will never be worn outside of the runway, but the authors of this choose to mock rather than to ask why fashion is so out of touch with reality, why it's almost compulsary for designers to make garments with no function (though it could also be asked why companies are making fortunes from making shoes that are crippling people more comfortable!).
Overall this book just made me slighly annoyed, yes there are knits in it that I have no idea why they were even conceived but there also knits that I can see could be used for education or entertainment. Kids get fake food toys all the time we don't seem to question it as much when we get it from a shop, or see it in a gallery, but we seem to question it a lot when someone who isn't part of the artistic establishment chooses to make it themselves.
I still don't understand some of them, but I also sometimes don't understand modern art, I wouldn't choose some of it for my house or to knit it myself (unless hugely bribed, and it would have to be huge) but each to their own.
I got this one from the library a while ago. Dublin City public libraries employ me and provided this book, I get no added inducements for doing this above my salary, access and generous lending facilities
