Admit it: You have been there…
Watching a movie or a television program, and you are all into the story and the inner machinations of the characters and all of their dramas and struggles and tensions and feelings, and then suddenly, your eyes wander towards a knitted item on the screen…
<< Inner monologue >>
Wow, that is really amazing/unique/beautiful knit…
How did they do that?
Hmm… wonder if I could find a pattern like this… could I design this?
<< stream of consciousness – insert names of yarns, patterns, designers >>
By the time you snap back, you have missed a few minutes of plotlines and a major development … Thank goodness for digital video recorders – they have helped me many a time.
“Oooh, rewind that – pause it. Look at that sweater!”
I can almost hear Kris roll his eyes when I do this… it happens that often.
The most recent film knit inspiration came from the 2002 Masterpiece Theatre miniseries Doctor Zhivago … nothing like a Bolshevik Revolution and a frozen wasteland to get that knitting inspiration on, eh?
As Yury escapes from his Red Army captors, he must cross the frozen Ural mountains – he is starving, half-mad, fighting frostbite and desperately yearning to see his beloved Lara again…
…but oh my…
Look at his pullover!
It was hard to find a full frontal (heh) of this pullover in the online screen captures, but I found enough of the shots to show the details of the sweater, as highlighted above. I searched around on Ravelry and came across a few patterns that look close enough… in my mind, I thought that there was a Rowan pattern that was very similar to it, but an initial search didn’t pull anything up… it does seem simple enough to just cast on and see where it goes from there…
I even have some gray Lopi that looks like a great match for it…
Lara (played by Keira Knightly in this rendition) also sports a traditional Russian hat that I was also quite distracted by… of course, I don’t want to use real fur or even a “fun fur” type of yarn. Perhaps a chenille would work? Hmmm…
Or would this just look plain silly? Maryland barely got snow last winter…
Of course, nearly every Harry Potter film has had some eye-catching knit item in it (there are whole groups inspired by the Harry Potter knits) and the mittens that Bella wore in the movie Twilight (for about 5 minutes of screen time – no more) inspired a massive knitalong on Ravelry with 1400+ active projects (heck, I even queued them up!)
It seems to be the cold-weather period pieces that most inspire me – Scandanavian subtitles, British historical miniseries, and the occasional documentary about ill-fated Antarctic explorations…
Oh Mr. Shackleton, what a fetching basketweave turtleneck sweater you are wearing…
Even when marooned on icebergs, Mr. Shackleton sported this snappy seed stitch number…
Of course, there have been plenty of other film knits that have inspired over my (nearly) six years of knitting. I haven’t yet made any of these knits, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen!
Any big or small screen knits that have inspired you lately?
I really like the shrug that Drew Barrymore’s character wears in “Music & Lyrics”. There is a similar one in “Knit 2 Together” that I have not made.
I bought the dvd The Holiday just so I could watch it agin and agian and freeze frame it on the fantastic knits that Cameron Diaz’s character wears. I want to knit all the sweaters she wears in that movie…
I have not seen it, but a knitting friend tells me that there are some good sweaters in Julie and Julia (or is it Julia and Julie?).
I do the same thing… catch myself watching the wardrobes more than the movies some times… Oh well…
And I have to be honest… unless you live in Western MD, I don’t think you would get much use of that hat… but it does look very nice and warm…
Karen — another Marylander…
My mom watches “Nurse Jackie” on Showtime and is besotted with the scarf Edie Falco wears. It’s a crocheted granny square scarf. She’s working on coming up with a pattern of her own for it!
I watched an entire episode of some sort of horrid model search show just because of the fabulous slouchy hat one of the models had on… I now keep my camera next to the couch so I can take photos of the screen when I see something cool.
Great post! You’re totally right about this, internal dialogue and everything. I’m particularly keen on Cameron Diaz’s aran sweater in The Holiday, which someone did create a pattern for on Ravelry. Someday I will get around to knitting it!
Fun post! A few years ago, I admired the matching crocheted hats worn by “the blonds” in an Amazing Race All-Star season. At the time, I didn’t crochet but that didn’t deter me. I scoured the Internet for a screen shot of the hats and found one. I took the photo to Imagiknit and found yarn that worked. I knit a copy of the crocheted hat and was pretty happy with it! (It’s here: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/LGordon555/amazing-race-hat) Funny you mentioned the Twilight movie — I actually just watched it a few days ago and was struck much more by the knits than the story line!
I do this all the time, hehe! One piece I really want to knit is this unbelievable nice cardigan that Keira Sedgwick’s charecter “Brenda” in the show “The Closer” wears and a woman on ravelry has designed a cardigan that looks like it (The Brenda Cardigan) and even offers the pattern for free on her blog. This is so amazing!
The blue cardigan Linda was wearing in one of the most recent Better Off Ted episodes was super cute and I did cap it even though it was on screen for like three seconds.
I’m also planning to knit my little sister a coat based off of the one Tima wears in the Tezuka’s Metropolis, if anyone’s seen that. I have a million different caps, oh my.
I also have a particular picture of Buddy Holly in a sweater I think is adorable, not to mention an entire folder full of similar stuff from a million different things.
The most recent one that caught my eye was “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”. The little boy had some nice vests and cardigans.
I haven’t gotten to watch much tv lately, but there’s a sweater a guy at work wears with amazing raglan cabled sleeves that haunts me… Oh, and would this sweater work? http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/shawl-collar-jacket-2 You could do it in stockinette instead of patterned and it seems like it would come out very similar. (And yes, I am the one who stalks people in the grocery store to get a look at their sweaters…)
Yep, I can relate too. The first knit that comes to my mind is kind of a hood Whoppi Goldberg wears in “A Knight of Camelot”. It was red and looked like homespun yarn. Gee, I have to get hold of that DVD and have a gooooood look again. Or a sweet – I think light blue – shawl Heike Makatsch hangs over her shoulders in “Margarete Steiff” an on and on and on and……..
Thanks for making me smile
Two words: Benjamin. Button.
Oh yes! Happens all the time. I watched The Changeling twice to get a good look at the cloches and I constantly spot the most amazing knits on Audrey Tautou.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of mistakes in historic films like Doctor Zhivago.
Big mistake – Keira Knightly’s hat.
In Russia only men carried this type of hat.
I know exactly what you mean! I do that all the time too…
About the hat Kiera is sporting: you could try the yarn DROPS Puddel from Garnstudio. It looks just like fleece when you knit something up with it. I have a project in mind where I’m goint to use it as a “fur trim” sans fur.
I remember Howard’s End is full of great knits. A classic cable cardigan with shawl collar, I recall! At least pausing a movie is not as bad as stalking a sweater as an actual person wears it on the street!
I can think of a couple of movies:
-Gwynneth Paltrow wears an amazing creamy chunky sweater in Proof. I’ll re-watch it on the Movie Chanel just to see the scene where she wears the sweater:
http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/proof-0.jpg
- Cynthia Nixon wears a gorgeous peacock blue cardi that features basket weave stitch in the Sex and the City movie. While everyone else was drooling over the designer duds, I was trying to make mental notes about this knit. I didn’t really care for the movie, but again, I’ve been keeping an eye out on the Movie Chanel so I can see the sweater again.
- This isn’t knitting, but I’m obsessed with a Granny Square blanket in Nanny McPhee. It’s in dark and jewelly tones. LOVE IT. Want to make it!
- The first Narnia movie has some great traditional brit-knits for kids, so does The Secret Garden and The Secret of Roan Inish
I’m glad I’m not the only one!
It’s so funny to read that a lot of other knitters out there have the exact same feeling when a knitted garment appears on screen. I just re-watched The Golden Compass last night and it is full of these moments – glad I had read the book before seeing it, so I didn’t miss the story totally ‘course the scenes are full of things I would really love to make. And also things made of the most beautiful yarn I dream of just holding and caressing a bit…
By the way, you are not the only one hearing eyes roll when this happens – my boyfriend does exactly the same. I told him about your post and that I’m not alone on this one – he laughed a lot and promised me to explain the plot every time I get lost from now on…
Do this all the time! There is a Charleze Theron/Keanea Reeves movie where she is knitting and wearing these cool scarves and sweaters through the entire movie. I find myself saying, “hey, that yarn is cool!” and studying the scarves and sweaters! LOL
I don’t notice knits as much on-screen, but I’m the knitter who peers at sweaters when I see them in public. Last year I tried to subtly follow a woman around the grocery store because she had the coolest cabled seamless yoke sweater on. The cables got smaller as they traveled vertically towards the neck. I still can’t figure out how it was made (I’m sure it wasn’t handmade).
And I admit it: I rip pictures of sweaters out of the LL Bean catalog as inspiration!
This makes me laugh because I was just watching Kit Kiteridge with my daughter. She’s enjoying the movie and I’m looking at all the knitting sweaters and hats the characters are wearing. Sure wish they would release those sweater patterns.
I’m laughing as I read, because this absolutely DOES happen to me, and just like you, I can almost hear my husband’s eyes roll as he hit rewind.
I love to rent a DVD and freeze and zoom in on great sweaters. I love the knits in Proof, the TV series Brothers and Sisters, and just recently noticed lots of great knitting content in The Time Traveler’s Wife. Go see it!
Ok so there seems to be a few of us. That’s good. At least there is strength in numbers. Along with many of the knitted items above the ones I really liked were from the movie the Golden Compass. The little girl Lyra when she was going to find the Polar Bear wears this very wonderful knitted sweater and hat. I’ve lost sleep over it trying to figure it out.
Happy Weekend.
Great post today. Maybe us film knitters need our own ravelry group.
My favorite part of The Matrix was all the raggedy grey sweaters–probably because I own quite a few myself. And this was well before I started knitting.
There was a very pretty blue sweater on the episode of Law and Order my mom was watching last night. I had no interest in Law and Order, but the sweater had these pretty little pleats on the shoulders . . .
I do this too.
Ha! This cracked me up because it sounds so familiar…
My kids were just watching The Secret Garden and the girl has a beautiful dark orange beret that she wears throughout the movie. It has sort of a garter/reverse stockinette pattern and looks very cute (I’d lose the big pom on top, though). We also just rewatched Local Hero, an ’80′s movie filmed in Scotland, and it seems every character is wearing some lovely cabled or colorwork item. There is an amazing Faroese sweater that must be authentic.
Looks like the studios are missing out on a revenue stream here–I’d definitely buy more DVDs if they came with knitting patterns.
Oh, this is funny! This happened to me while I was watching The Tudors yesterday. A very minor character (Wolsey’s wife) is on-screen for about two minutes, but it’s the scene I remember most from that episode because her shawl was just beautiful. I can’t stop thinking about it!
What about Harry Potter? Way back when it first came out, I fell in love with the Griffendor scarf colors, so I went about making a scarf. Yeah, I could only find those colors in acrylic, but oh well. He outgrew HP so quickly, and then, years later, wore the scarf to the theater (where he now works) on opening day of the Harry Potter movies. How cool is that?
Oh me too! I’m a nut about watching a movie over & over just to see knitty things and wardrobe. In fact, I recently posted about this too here if you’d like to stop by: http://myfireflycottage.blogspot.com/2009/07/have-you-seen_20.html
. Also, “The Good Witch” and “The Good Witches Garden” (Hallmark Channel) have some great cardigans.
I love love the knits in “The Edge of Love” (didn’t like the movie that much though), “The Ballet Shoes” (great little movie), “Hilary & Jackie”, and I too am obsessed with the “Nanny McPhee” granny sqaure afghan — even have the yarns for it, and it’s in my Rav queue, just not on the needles yet
Oh, and there’s a group on Ravelry called, ‘As Seen in the Movies’, that sometimes has links to patterns similar to those seen in movies.
Blessings,
G
YES! That happens to me ALL THE TIME! The Holiday has some lovely knits…I love the Harry Potter ones, too…pretty much every movie I watch I find something new I want to knit. Those Shackleton ones are fabulous (if one can look fabulous under such circumstances
). I must show them to my husband…
I do it too. I remember that shawl collared sweater of which you speak, actually.
That’s so cool that you mention this- I think about that every time I watch a film. Some films really got great knitting in them! Only last week we watched “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” – which has Penelope Cruz and Nicholas Cage running about in the most incredible knitwear! And her maybe-to-be mother-in-law wears an intruiging crocheted shawl.. And remember that Emma Thompson children’s movie (Nanny McPhee was it?) which I think was the one with that fabulous crocheted granny-blanket. And the Narnia films… I could keep going on…
There was one in Big Fish, a belted cardigan with a shawl collar worn by the daughter-in-law of the main character (can’t remember the names, it’s been too long since I’ve seen the movie). That sweater was gorgeous!
I have been watching ‘Big Love’ on DVD lately and I am always distracted by Margene’s cute little sweaters. The colors, the fine gauge, the cute croppiness…I want them all!
Rachel McAdams wears a crazy number of great sweaters in The Time Traveler’s Wife. Fabulous sweaters! And January Jones was a wearing a great sweater at the end of Mad Men this week. She was wearing it in bed, so it’s probably supposed to be a bedjacket, but it had a great waffle texture.
I knitted some of those Bella mittens just as it warmed up in the spring. Two pairs, actually. One for a friend and one for our house. We’ll see if I get to wear them at all or if my two oldest daughters end up fighting it out. lol.
Glad to know I’m not alone in this! I was drooling over Hermione’s knitted turtleneck sweater with the pink stripes in the latest Harry Potter movie. And of course, the one detail that I still remember about the Twilight movie was the mittens Bella wore!
I’m intrigued not by a knitted garment in a movie but by something being knitted in a TV show. “Hung” on HBO has a character named Tanya. She’s been shown knitting, moving her knitting off the couch, and last week her knitting was seen in the background on the coffee table. I have no idea what she is making.
This is the Hermione sweater, though I’m sure you and your readers will already know which one I’m talking about!
http://www.geekforcefive.com/images/uploads/harry-potter_half-blood-prince_ron-harry-hermione.png
Tina Fey in 30 Rock has some of the best knit accessories I have ever seen. I really want to be her when I grow up.
As someone mentioned briefly above, The Secret of Roan Inish has some fantastic Irish pieces. And they all look like treasured heirlooms!
Tanya in HBO’s “Hung” is knitting something maroon colored on straight needles and it’s driving me nuts; I want to know what it is!
I know *exactly* what you mean. I do the same thing all the time. I recently watched the Coraline again when I bought the DVD and I was completely enthralled with the knits in that.
I must have been living in a cave because I missed the Bella’s Mittens pattern. I am so going to make those now!
Nice post. I do that too, and I get my fair share of eye rolling…
LOL I do this all the time; the same thing happened to me with the Shackleton sweater, only the first time I saw it was when it was on Kenneth Branagh in the A&E miniseries
. For the last season of 24, I got together with friends from my kntiting group to watch the show. At one point a character walked onscreen and we all went “oooooh, look at her *sweater*!” when we really should have been paying attention to the plot.
I’m determined to make myself a sweater like the one in the Bourne Identity (only not in that baby poop brown/yellow colour). I’ve already freeze-framed the DVD and figured out the stitch pattern; I just need to do the math for my size.
I noticed that the knits in HP6 were good ones, I’d gone out to see it with Chris and Barb, and Chris just emailed me today to say she’d seen it second time and was able to focus more on the knits!!! Good advice. I may go see it again for just that purpose.
I’ve long planned to knit Bella’s mitts, got some fab purple possum/merino in stash for them.
But the most stunning news in your entry was there was a miniseries of Dr. Zhivago! How could I not know this? Racing to check it out NOW. Thanks for the tip. Looking forward to seeing your rendition of Yuri’s sweater!
I’ve been watching the Buffy and Angel series DVDs (for the first time) this summer. As I go through, it’s been constant stop, rewind, screen shot, post to flickr/ravelry, repeat. There are some awesome and fun knits in those shows. I’m having a blast cataloging them.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wzrdreams/sets/72157621929828841/
Years ago, before I could knit well at all, I was watching some show about Einstein that was on PBS… fascinating biography, but it featured a lot of period re-enacting, and as soon as I saw Albert’s future wife Mileva’s crocheted early-1900s tam… yeah, you know what happened. By the end of the show, I had designed it in my head, and I promptly crocheted it that night.
That was the beginning of the end… now I’m destined to get distracted by ANY knitwear I see ANYWHERE – TV, movies, ads, people walking down the street – haha.
Now I’m going to look through all of these comments and see what great knits I might have missed!
I knit my son a sweater with a collar just like the sweater Edmund wears in the Chronicles of Narnia Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, at his request.