In Her Words: 20 Quotes from Elizabeth Zimmermann | VogueKnitting.com

In Her Words: 20 Quotes from Elizabeth Zimmermann | VogueKnitting.com

From A Knitter's Journal

“Really, all you need to become a good knitter are wool, needles, hands and slightly below-average intelligence. Of course, superior intelligence, such as yours and mine, is an advantage.” – Knitting Without Tears

“One un-vents something; one unearths it; one digs it up; one runs it down in whatever recesses of the eternal consciousness it has gone to ground. I very much doubt if anything is really new when one works in the prehistoric medium of wool and needles.”
– Knitter’s Almanac

“...there are few knitting problems that will not yield to a blend of common sense, ingenuity and resourcefulness...” – The Opinionated Knitter

“My kind of character enjoys work best when work is fun, and progress can be noted and gloated over. When I have a long plain piece of knitting ahead I put a safety-pin at each day’s beginning to show me how I am coming.” – Knitter’s Almanac

“In some quarters November is considered rather a dull month, but not at our house. It is a time of snugging down, of finding and foiling sources of draughts; of augmenting the woodpile, putting up the bird-feeders, starting in on some serious reading, and knitting—always knitting.” – Knitter’s Almanac

“One important admonition—carry yarn very loosely across the back of your work, otherwise your knitting will pucker, and be wasted and unloved.” – The Opinionated Knitter

“When times are tough I sit down to spin during the news-broadcasts, with therapeutic results. Knitting, as you well know, is therapy too.” – Knitter’s Almanac

“A swatch is not wasted labor by any means; it makes an excellent pocket...” – The Opinionated Knitter

“I deliberately keep my knitting notes vague, because tastes vary, and your brains are as good as mine anyway.” – The Opinionated Knitter

“I don’t like zippers in sweaters, but many recipients insist, so I give in...I sew them in neatly, by hand, on the right side, muttering to myself.” – The Opinionated Knitter

“To blend almost-matching yarns, work alternate rows of them for an inch or so.” – The Opinionated Knitter

“Did I say I am never inspired? Pay no attention to me; I’ll say anything. Inspiration is unsettling to a degree. If not pinned down immediately by being worked on—actually knitted up—it melts away like the morning dew and is lost forever.” – Knitter’s Almanac

“Now, have a good summer. Dabble your feet in the water, and fill the sock-drawer against next winter. I find this as satisfying as studying seed-catalogues by a roaring January fire.” – The Opinionated Knitter

“Last night, the moon—three-quarters full—reflected herself in the water behind the triple twisted cedar as in a Japanese print. This morning the print has changed; all the further shores have disappeared, the sun is seen only as a pale radiance, and sky and water have merged and mingled. Tall rushes mirror themselves unwaveringly in the glassy lake, making one perfect circle...” – Knitter’s Almanac

“Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn’t hurt the untroubled spirit either.” – Knitting Without Tears

“...how comforting to be engaged in the creation of artifacts for which the demand is—as far as I can see—infinite.” – The Opinionated Knitter

“October: the month when knitting really starts coming into its own again... The sun is once more welcome to shine in at the south windows and as the sunshiny patch moves across the floor, the cats move with it, basking and stretching.” – Knitter’s Almanac

“For people allergic to wool, one’s heart can only bleed. Synthetics are a marvelous substitute, but a substitute is all they are.” – Knitting Without Tears

“Although babies rarely, if ever, express their pleasure at being dressed in wool, it is surely manifest when you dote on a small plump person soundly and contentedly asleep, swaddled in woollen sweater, woollen leggings and a soft wool bonnet, snugly tucked under a fine warm wool blanket.” – Knitter’s Almanac

“Now, let us all take a deep breath and forge on into the future; knitting at the ready.” – The Opinionated Knitter

For more information on Elizabeth Zimmermann and her legacy, please visit www.schoolhousepress.com.

By Shirley A. Scott (Shirl the Purl)

I venture to say that a huge number of readers of this magazine can date the flowering of their knitting lives from the day they discovered Schoolhouse Press. Before that decisive moment, we seemed to labor alone, isolated, each in our own private creative universe. Some of us felt ignorant and untaught, not knowing where to turn to improve the work that is the love of our lives.

Then came the turning point, the blinding flash, the bursting bud, the true exultation of first discovering Elizabeth Zimmermann. We were captivated by her engaging chitchat and intrigued by her opinionated notions of how to do things.No longer did we dare to knit our pullovers in flat pieces that had to be sewn together, or watch the backs of sweaters ride up the necks of our brawny menfolk. Why, this clever woman even had a remedy for men who ruined their lovingly knit socks because the brutes had augers where they should have had heels. Clearly, EZ: The Opinionated Knitter, as she came to be known, lived in the real world.

Perhaps there are even a few of you who knit that first Aran sweater, the one that kicked off the whole thing. It appeared in a 1957 issue of Vogue Patterns.* Elizabeth was told it was the first such sweater ever presented in a U.S. magazine. She knit it flat, from cryptic written instructions, and with no photo to guide her. What a mystery it must have been! And were you one who subsequently ordered the Sheepswool to make the sweater from Elizabeth herself? If so, you were present at the birthing of what would eventually become Schoolhouse Press, for Elizabeth’s payment for her work was encouragement to sell the wool for the sweater. And the pay turned out to be handsome indeed—more handsome than she could ever have imagined in those early days. Fifty years later we are still knitting her knits, her way. We are still buying her wool, and we are still singing the praises of Schoolhouse Press.

Enlightenment and Icons
When Elizabeth Zimmermann’s technical common sense and quirky charm first began to be known, a wild wind of freedom blew through the knitting world, and it blows there still. The blind following of written patterns was no longer the only way to knit effectively. EZ gave us tools to serve the artist within us.

Take Elizabeth’s Percentage System, or EPS, a quantitative method of sweater design whereby a knitter begins with a Key Number, based on gauge and the circumference of the garment. Every essential measurement thereafter is a specific percentage of this number. Surely every thinking knitter in this wide world has sensed, however dimly, that some sort of general theorem lurks behind the shape of our sweaters. To have Elizabeth tackle the proportions head-on, expounding on them in so many projects and articles, was as satisfying as fitting the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle in place. And EPS—frequently updated and refined to suit new garment types, changing silhouettes and current fashions—has been the gift that keeps on giving.

In addition to this deep sense of classic proportion, an understanding of the architecture of knitted garments is fundamental to all Schoolhouse Press projects. EZ’s spatial and sculptural sense took a quantum leap when she devised her Surprise Jacket. Was a lucky comet seen in the midwestern sky at its conception, flying over a certain schoolhouse? Did a bolt of lightning strike the ground nearby? The muse was definitely with Elizabeth that day, and knitters everywhere continue to marvel at the concept of this garment. We cast on, then seem to increase and decrease willy-nilly for a considerable, and sometimes distressing, number of rows. Are we doing the right thing? Why, nothing about it looks like a jacket in any way—until it is bound off and folded into place, that is. Then the surprise is intense indeed. Lovely proportions and gracious lines emerge from this unlikely chrysalis. The Adult Surprise and the Baby Surprise jackets are icons of American knitting. A very special brain dreamed them up.

Other famous Schoolhouse Press designs have also made history. The Tomten jacket, created originally for Arnold and Elizabeth’s firstborn child, young Tom, was later worn by little Lloie and little Meg before Elizabeth finally shared its secrets in her newsletter. EZ says it was based on something she had “once glimpsed” in Scandinavia. And again, who among us ever imagined that the concept of pi had anything whatsoever to do with knitting until Elizabeth and, later, Meg explored the Pie Are Square shawl and its offspring?

Signature Techniques
The development and promotion of signature techniques is another area in which the Schoolhouse Press star glows so brightly in the knitting firmament. Take the amusingly named Thumb Trick, for example, just one of several innovations that sprang from Elizabeth when she turned her mind to the construction of everyday mittens. And what about Nalgar shaping, that ingenious upside-down way of creating a raglan seam on a sweater? Or I-cord (short for the EZ-named Idiot Cord) in its dozens of manifestations? Meg, who shares her late mother’s technical genius, continues to build on these and to originate technique after technique. EZ, as fond of wordplay as she was of practical design, always insisted that the real reason knitters like to learn clever new tricks is “to foil friends.”

Did these signature techniques truly originate with Schoolhouse Press? The point is moot, but just for the record, let’s remember that it was Elizabeth herself who referred to the discovery of new techniques as “unventing,” not “inventing.” It was her contention that there is really nothing new under the knitting sun, and that a knitter is simply a medium for transferring the knowledge of the ages that is buried in our collective unconscious.

It is always delightful to remember too that Elizabeth is famous for alfresco unventing. The knitting muse might (and did) strike anywhere, whether in open rowboats on the shores of northern lakes, on a “no frills” family camping trip or in the front seat of a warm vehicle at a ski meet. The universally acclaimed One Row Buttonhole was developed on a European park bench when Elizabeth accompanied Arnold on a business trip. Sharing the context of every discovery has enriched our image of Schoolhouse Press forever. It has never been “just another company.”

The Business Story
Although Arnold and Elizabeth would undoubtedly have done well anywhere in the world, the history of Schoolhouse Press has elements of a classic American success story. After a blissful period of youthful romance in Europe, a carefree interval that deteriorated as war loomed, Arnold escaped from Germany, never to see many of his family members again. He married the British-born Betty Lloyd-Jones in England; they came to America in 1937. As Elizabeth wrote in Knitting Around, “There we were, pregnant, jobless and in debt ...” Not an auspicious beginning, but one shared by a great many young immigrant families.

Career prospects slowly improved for Arnold, who was a brewmaster. The family moved to Milwaukee, home of the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company, in 1949. During this time Elizabeth’s energies were focused on providing love, support and the necessities of life for her growing family, including son Tom and daughters Meg and Lloie. This included beautiful, sturdy, warm clothing, so knitting was always in the picture.

“I knew from my English upbringing that the moment Tom was born, he should be well supplied with knitted woollen garments,” she wrote. Her absolute belief in wool for babies could never be shaken. EZ began her knitting life doing everything the English way, but because of her early experiences living in other countries, her concepts and methods became decidedly continental quite early on. After the move to Wisconsin, she became even more steeped in European knitting traditions, learning from friends and neighbors in the great melting pot of the Midwest. The Scandinavian technique of cutting the front of a cardigan from a tube of knitting, for example, would have been heretical in England. This, it seems, was a fertile period when the richness of Elizabeth’s knitting life truly began to deepen, and the Opinionated Knitter began confidently forging those famous Opinions. Sharing with other knitters, “helping them with some of their puzzles and troubles...taught me what a sad knitting life many knitters led, dependent on knitting instructions.”

In 1957, she submitted a Fair Isle Yoke sweater for a pattern-company booklet; the instructions were rewritten from circular to flat; in one of the photos, a seam line was drawn in. Alterations to her patterns continued, and in September 1958, a frustrated EZ published her own set of instructions for a Fair Isle Yoke pullover, offering it as a 25-cent single-sheet newsletter. She had begun selling wool a few years earlier, having found a big batch of it under the counter of a neighborhood shop, but the actual publishing business began with the planting of this small 25-cent acorn. In 1958, she published her first formal newsletter. After Issue 22, the Zimmermanns enlarged the format and renamed it Wool Gathering.

The “sad lives” of knitters dependent on written instructions was the catalyst for Elizabeth’s first foray into the world of writing books. She began work on Knitting Without Tears in 1970, and it was published by Scribner’s (now part of Simon & Schuster) in 1971—the publisher’s only crafts book published since then to never have gone out of print. Sales broke record after record for years and years. Knitters were more than ready for a book like this.

The move to television came in 1964. The response to The Busy Knitter, shown in ten half-hour episodes, was such that a second season followed shortly thereafter. Elizabeth and Meg both credit the growth in subscriptions to Wool Gathering to the fact that the show’s second season was aired nationally, and likely viewed enthusiastically by many reading this article today.

By this time, EZ’s innate pedagogical skills had become very fine indeed, and she was much in demand as a teacher and speaker. In 1974 the first “knitting camp” was held at Shell Lake, under the auspices of the University of Wisconsin. Elizabeth and Arnold always loved outdoor adventure and were never overly concerned with amenities, so early knitting camps were much more rugged than they are today. In the 1980s, camp moved to “town,” specifically to Marshfield, Wisconsin, where thanks to Meg and her devoted team, its popularity continues to grow and grow. Each year a family of bright, eager knitters gathers to share some of the most sophisticated designs and methods ever seen in hand-knitting circles.

It was Meg and her late husband Chris, remembered fondly as Camera Guy, who spotted the opportunity to diversify Schoolhouse Press by introducing video. The timing proved providential, as industry people had begun to realize that beginning knitters did not always have a knowledgeable family member nearby to teach them. Meg and Chris embraced video at a time when very few people had considered its possibilities. They set about learning all they could about this new medium, ultimately using clever over-the shoulder shots of Meg knitting so that viewers could see the stitches as if they were holding the needles themselves. (Until then it was common for non-knitting cameramen to use a head-on shot, possibly because they thought it was more conventionally artistic.) Later, after Chris’s untimely passing, the Swansens’ son Cully jumped in. He has been instrumental in expanding into digital technology (he produces all the DVDs) and in adding his own creative touches. Says Meg: “Our growth is largely due to Cully and [his wife] Michelle—bless them. It’s just what Chris envisioned, that one of his kids would come into the business with us.”

Doing Business in a Schoolhouse
A knitting newbie might be forgiven for thinking that the name Schoolhouse Press is simply a homey invention, a rustic front for a multinational empire, rather like Betty Crocker. Such is the company’s position in the knitting landscape that we may at first assume it is a huge concern. Not so. In fact, if this were not America, the notion of a schoolhouse in Wisconsin being an epicenter of hand knitting would be nonsensical.

The move to the schoolhouse came in the late 1950s. When EZ and Arnold first found it, it was a derelict building where the previous owner had “blown his brains out,” according to Elizabeth. Not superstitious, they were immediately charmed by its potential, but when they confirmed their notion of buying and restoring it, people feared for their sanity. The Zimmermanns nevertheless undertook the impossible project as a labor of love, and the schoolhouse eventually became the center of the family’s life and business.

And this is a family business indeed. We have come to know the Zimmermann/Swansen clan as well as we know our own. Through publications and photographs, we’ve studied how Meg learned to purl as a tiny tot at EZ’s knee. We saw how Meg and Lloie grew up wearing their authentic EZ ski sweaters as they traveled Europe. Husbands Chris and Stoo became models as familiar to us as Elizabeth and Arnold. Many of the original garments worn in these photos still exist.

And then “even unto the third generation,” as the Good Book would put it. We have admired Meg’s kids Cully and Liesl since they were young knitters in their Waldorf School, waiting to see who they would marry and how their lives would unfold. Their partners, Michelle and Lalo, are now our in-laws too, it seems. And we rejoiced with Meg at the arrival of her lovely grandchildren, Eli, Ceci and Renata, curious to see what new knitting fever their births would spark. All of these connections are made, and continue to be made by avid fans, through the pages of print, the DVDs, the telephone and knitting camp.

And who could overlook, for one moment, the stunning cats of Schoolhouse Press? Many kitty generations ago, Kline, the Siamese, was carried to the TV studio in a picnic basket, where he took an active part in the filming of The Busy Knitter. Later, others made cameo appearances, striding confidently across wet-blocked shawls with no discomfort whatsoever, thus proving indisputably that wool is warm when wet.

In the days before e-business became common, customers calling Schoolhouse Press to place an order were quickly disabused of the silly idea they were dealing with an uncaring multinational wool conglomerate. They received, in fact, the curious impression that whoever answered the phone simply leaned over a desk and eyeballed the shelves to see what was in stock. Ditto for sorting out postal imbroglios, because dear Eleanor, with whom we might choose to discuss the weather, could always remember what she had shipped.

Some of these impressions were actually quite true, until Meg made a big decision in 2005 to expand after realizing that the only real impediment to growing Schoolhouse Press was the lack of actual storage facilities for their burgeoning product line. A big new purpose-built facility was erected on the property, within sight of the schoolhouse, and now the product line can continue to expand, convivial events to be organized, and joy to be unconfined.

Schoolhouse Press Style
Today the vast majority of media events, entertainment programs and fashion spreads seem to occur in some unrecognizable America where the climate is always Mediterranean and summers always endless. But at Schoolhouse Press, the style is classic heartland, wearable in every season, indoors and out. Winter and warmth figure prominently in the inspiration of the garment line and in its commercial images. People who like to feel comfortable and to wear welcoming clothes adore Schoolhouse Press style. Designs are forever classic—warm socks, sweaters, jackets, shawls, hats and mittens. Garments are always knit to fit, shaped cleverly and intricately where they need to be shaped, and generously where real people with real figures desire generosity. Meg and Lloie once had a public chuckle in print about the “dreadful frontal droop” that can afflict certain cardigans. They were slim young women, and any sort of droop anywhere on the figures seemed like such a remote possibility. Gravity inevitably made itself known to even them, however, and Meg developed advanced technical measures to eliminate frontal droop in cardigans.

If attention to fit has always characterized a Schoolhouse Press design, so has the pleasure of wool. From the very beginning, wool was Elizabeth's one and only fiber of choice, and Meg has concurred. EZ’s preference most likely had its roots in prewar Britain, a country legendary for its chilliness. In Knitting Around she recollected that at her school, girls were not allowed to wear their blazers in the evenings unless the thermometer read below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Later life in a Wisconsin schoolhouse could only have strengthened this devotion. In their writings, conversations and patterns, both Meg and Elizabeth refer to wool with the language of love.

The Schoolhouse Press fiber product line has remained relatively small and totally stable, a still point in the cyclonic world of yarn trends. It includes a small number of time-tested brands of pure wool that have a huge gauge and color range—and heaps of integrity. Less is indeed more, for these select yarns have given birth to hundreds of glowing creations.

The inspiring book, video and DVD catalog has grown and grown. The selection is large, varied and delicious. It includes a wide and very welcome selection of books on world knitting, for indeed no knitter is an island. We have Schoolhouse Press largely to thank for much current knowledge of Latvian, Armenian, Bavarian, Icelandic and Faroese knitting techniques, to mention but a few, and for reissuing Barbara Walker’s epic Treasury series.

It is doubtful whether either Meg or Elizabeth ever envisioned themselves as business tycoons. In fact, in the early days Elizabeth referred to her creation as “my little wool business.” But after fifty years, although EZ no longer bodily knits with us, Schoolhouse Press continues as a powerful force in the knitting world. Hand knitting continues to survive threats of extinction because of companies like this. Let’s knit on then, with hope and confidence, for another fifty years.

For more information on Elizabeth Zimmermann and her legacy, please visit www.schoolhousepress.com.