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Posted in Knitting
April 20, 2008

Architecture-inspired knits

I’m working on a series of Cleveland architecture-inspired knits right now. Ever since I got the idea in my head, it just won’t leave. Here are some photos I snapped the other day while scoping locations for a summer art show we’re doing this year:


This is the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank.


This statue guards one of the side doors at the Bank.

But the two images that just won’t go away are the Hope Memorial Bridge‘s “Guardians of Traffic” and the West Side Market. They offer some pretty fun challenges, knit-design-wise, from incorporating subtle color and texture to delineate the lines to sizing motifs down or up.

The bridge was renamed after Bob Hope, whose father may be one of the stonemasons pictured here working on the guardians:

While the guardians’ faces are interesting, it’s their bodies that are really speaking to me, knit-wise. Sometimes I find it frustrating to know exactly what it is I want to knit, but haven’t got the time to work on…and so these patterns will be percolating in my head a little while longer.

What’s interesting in your neighborhood from a knit-idea perspective?

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6 comments

  • BalletMommy

    I can’t wait to see what you come up with. In my “neighborhood” I’m always inspired by the redwoods and the ocean. I’m not a knitting designer (yet) but I am working on being more of a watercolor artist. I’m thinking of using the color inspirations of these items in some yarns…or perhaps a knit pattern of some sort. Something personal.

    Reply to BalletMommy
  • Joanne

    Hey there! I get fascinated by green. I rarely can capitalize on it, but Kentucky offers more shades of green vegetation than anywhere I’ve ever been. It is rich, lush and deep. It’s also the kind of thing that might be easy for me to do in an artsy way but hard to write up in a pattern. (imagine, 15 different green yarns, from different companies, different weights..oh no. pattern from hell. You get the picture…)

    Reply to Joanne
  • Katie

    I love that bridge. It is by far the coolest thing in the city.

    Reply to Katie
  • Kelly Dickinson

    Hi Shannon! It was nice to knit with you tonight at In The Loop and pick up the books…See you at the Creativ Festival this weekend! Hope your trip is really productive.

    Reply to Kelly Dickinson
  • kristi

    We just traveled through San Francisco and I snapped a few photos from the moving car that I think are inspiring — the cables, the rivets, the color. I in no way feel this is MY bridge however. Surely it has inspired someone else’s fashions — it’s such an icon.

    I was also very inspired by the sand table at the Exploratorium. The particular way that sand flows through the holes in a perforated board… anyone who has seen it is surely similarly smitten (or isn’t, really).

    I love the idea of designs that are inspired by where you live. It has the makings of a great coffee table book.

    Reply to kristi
  • kristi

    Oh, my first paragraph there was about the Golden Gate Bridge…

    Reply to kristi

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