Le Dame

Le Dame is the capsule where Knitferatu stops making motifs and starts making characters. Medusa stares out in bone-white under a crown of emerald snakes; La Strega cradles her black cat beneath a gold crescent; La Catrina wears marigolds on the brim of her hat; the Sposa Cadavere waits, veiled, with her bouquet. Each one is a full portrait worked into the fabric, not a badge stamped on it.

Portraits are the hardest thing a flat-bed machine can be asked to do. A face reads or it does not, and there is no retouching a knitted face: the chart has to be right before the yarn moves. These four took the longest to program of anything in the collection, and they are the reason the atelier keeps the old machines running.